Features, Trucks

Old school trucks: Cheviot Transport

Cheviot Transport has been servicing the town and surrounding rural areas in many guises since the ’50s, with various ownership over the year

This month, we look at another sister company of Ellesmere Transport, Cheviot Transport.
Cheviot is situated 112km north of Christchurch on the State Highway 1 and other than traffic passing through the main trunk line, is a typical small New Zealand rural town.

Cheviot Transport has been servicing the town and surrounding rural areas in many guises since the ’50s, with various ownership over the years.

Perhaps the most notable was when Cheviot Transport ceased to exist in 1988 when the Transpac juggernaut swallowed them up along with several other Canterbury-based rural transport companies.

The Transpac era was short-lived, however, as they went broke and shut up shop less than two years later, and in true ‘phoenix rising from the ashes’ fashion, several ex-employees of Transpac in Cheviot took over what was left of the Transpac Cheviot Depot and Cheviot Transport was back in town.

The Hanna family then gained ownership before the Righton family of Ellesmere Transport acquired the business and remains at the helm to this day.

Back when I began photographing Cheviot Transport trucks in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Isuzu was the predominant brand in the fleet. Many rural transport companies utilised Japanese brands during those times before moving on to American and European gear when they became more established.

Throughout the ’90s and 2000s, many truck badges have been seen in the Cheviot Transport livery, with Foden, MAN, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and Nissan Diesel, to name a few, However, arguably the biggest head-turner was a new K108 Kenworth Aerodyne put on the road in 2010.

There was a logo and livery change, with the orange stripe removed and replaced with a larger red one, and the Volvo brand became the mainstay of the fleet, which is no surprise due to the Ellesmere Transport influence in the smart rural transport company from North Canterbury.

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Photography: Dean Middleton

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