Kapiti-based Clive Taylor Haulage believes investing in your staff reaps rewards for transport companies, with its company culture encouraging continuous improvement, teamwork and providing opportunities for employees to grow.

The bulk and heavy haulage experts, based in Paraparaumu and Taitoko Levin, are operated by Andrew ‘Sooty’ and Tania Breach, providing a wide range of cartage services throughout the North Island.

The company’s group of 15 drivers are all enrolled in MITO – Te Pūkenga’s micro-credentials, including new staff members as well as those who have been “doing it for 40 years”.

Sooty and Tania moved from Taranaki to the Kāpiti Coast two years ago to buy Clive Taylor’s business. Tania came from an operations manager role, and her background in training is something she says she is really passionate about.

“Truck driving is not just a job. It is a career,” Tania says. “We’re really focused on investing in our people and their future.”

Tania says their staff are a mixture of people starting out in the industry and those who have been driving for a while, but all are finding benefits in the programme.

“We’ve got one guy that we’ve been putting through his Class 5 licence, who’s on Ia Ara Aotearoa Transporting New Zealand’s Road to Success programme, and we’ve got guys that have been driving trucks for probably 40 years.

“We had a couple who were a bit hesitant at first, saying, ‘I’ve been driving for 40 years. I don’t need any of this’. But even some of those very experienced drivers said that they’ve learned new things. So that’s really awesome to hear.”

Clive Taylor Haulage won Transporting New Zealand’s Health and Safety Award last month for outstanding contribution to health and safety.

Tania says coming from Taranaki’s oil and gas sector, where there was a high benchmark for training and health and safety, it was a bit of an eye-opener coming to Paraparaumu, where there was nothing in place.

“The benefits for our business are obvious. Getting our guys home safely every day to their families is paramount. This training makes them aware of how to drive a big machine safely so the other people that are out there on the road are safe as well. It’s a big responsibility to drive a vehicle like that,” she says.

Tania says the flexibility of the micro-credential programme is ideal for transport operators.

“Some of the guys prefer to work individually, while some of them prefer to work as a group. So if they struggle a little bit on the computer and literacy side, we’re able to help them through that as well.

“There are multiple micro-credentials to work through. We started our guys off on the Mass and Dimensions micro- credential, and almost all of them have completed that now. And now we’re onto Loading Fundamentals,” she says.

“It’s an investment for us, but one that we see as being really worthwhile to invest back into our team.”

Keen to invest in your team? Visit mito.nz/roadtransport