Check out Cromwell Transport's old school trucks
The distinctive yellow, green, and white livery of Cromwell Transport is almost as impressive as the Central Otago landscape from which they hail. Based in industrial Cromwell, Cromwell Transport, otherwise known as CromTrans, has been servicing rural customers from within Central Otago for more than 40 years.
The Scott family bought CromTrans back in 1963, which was then known as McDonalds Cromwell Transport when the livery was yellow and black. One thing that became synonymous with the CromTrans fleet was and still is the Volvo brand. Over the last 30 plus years, few other brands have shared the stable with the Swedish brand. In fact, in recent years, there was only one truck that did not adorn the famous diagonal bar across it grill—a solitary Hino and even this was inherited from a previous company contractor.
Most Volvo models have worn the CromTrans colours throughout the decades and any time you saw their bright green and yellow trucks coming down the road, it was a sure bet it had the Swedish heritage.
There was to be one other change of ownership in the early 2000s before CromTrans was again purchased and became part of the Trojan Holdings group of companies in 2007.
While consolidating resources when required is commonplace when being a part of a group of transport companies, from the outside, Cromwell Transport has remained largely unchanged with a slight revamp of the signage itself.
More recently, the white top cab line and white aerokits have been replaced with the bright yellow, and thin white stripes now only flank the green stripes. One bigger change that was possibly influenced by becoming a division of Trojan Holdings’ was to be seen in late 2016 with the addition of two brand new Freightliner Argosy’s. It now seems Volvo will no longer have it all its own way in the CromTrams fleet, but having said that, the new Freightliners have done nothing to detract from this classic Central Otago fleet.
Photography: Dean Middleton