Ellesmere Transport can trace their roots back to the late 1930s and today is owned and operated by the Righton family of father and sons
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Truck spotting of Canterbury based rural transport companies was surprisingly easy for a young fella living on the east side of Christchurch back in the 1980s.
The Addington livestock saleyards were located next to Hagley Park only a few kilometres away from the city centre and, more importantly, only seven kilometres from where I lived.
This made biking to sale days after school a breeze to photograph the trucks loading out after the auctions.
The Addington saleyards were renowned for the layout with little room at the loading docks to swing a cat, never mind backing a truck and trailer unit into position. It was worth the bike ride alone, to see the level of skill on display by the operators of that era.
One company that almost always had a presence on sale day was Ellesmere Transport. Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, and International in their blue and yellow livery with red crates certainly looked the part and were always a good score to snap on the old 35mm camera.
Ellesmere Transport can trace their roots back to the late 1930s and today is owned and operated by the Righton family of father and sons. Father, Murray Righton began at Ellesmere Transport more than 60 years ago as an employee, before progressing to management positions within the company.
From there Murray became a minority shareholder and in time the outright owner.
Ellesmere Transport have two depots, one in Leeston near the southwest side of Lake Ellesmere and the other in Dunsandel on State Highway 1, 30kms south of the outskirts of Christchurch.
Throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, Volvo and Mercedes Benz dominated the fleet, along with various other brands, but there were a couple of noticeable exceptions:
One was a Mack Ultra Liner, which came about from the demise of the Transpac era, and the other was a 113M Scania, which turned plenty of heads in the fleet where only one of the Swedish brands was represented.
Livestock units made up the lion’s share of the fleet with bulkies, spreaders, town freight trucks, crane trucks and even concrete mixers making up the remainder. Next month, we take a look at how the fleet has evolved from the 2000s through to today.
Find more trucks for sale in NZ
Photography: Dean Middleton