Old School Trucks: Rooney Earthmoving — Part 1

In Part 1, Deals on Wheels takes a look at some Rooney and Tregenza trucking from the ’80s through to the early 2000s

Rooney Earthmoving can trace its roots back to 1976 when founder Gary Rooney went into business with a single bulldozer, based in Waimate, South Canterbury.

The company has since grown to be one of New Zealand’s largest and well-known Civil Contractor and has several other companies under the Rooney Group Banner.

As always, my interest lies in the trucking and transport divisions of non-general transport companies.

The first Rooney’s truck that turned my head back in the late ’80s was an R-Model Mack on transporter duties that really looked the part with twin stacks and twin air cleaners, and there were many more of the bulldog brand to come.

Rooney had various acquisitions over the years and one of these was Timaru-based G E Tregenza.

When I first began photographing trucks in the early ’80s, G E Tregenza were dark green with a light green stripe and R-Model Macks were the breadwinners of the fleet.

The company was then bought under the Richardson Group banner and gradually the livery was changed to mimic their sister company, Southern Transport.

The mid-’90s was when G E Tregenza changed hands again and came under Rooney’s ownership.

The Tregenza/Southern livery had another major change with Rooney’s colour scheme coming to the fore, but the company still operated under the Tregenza banner.

Different makes and models graced the fleet over the next few years, many of them inherited from the previous owners. The Mack brand was the mainstay for a time before Mercedes-Benz began to gather ascendancy in the fleet.

The year 1999 saw the first of the new-generation Mercedes-Benz Actros model enter the fleet and the brand has dominated the fleet since.

Next month, we take a look at fleet pictures from the early 2000s to today.

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Photography: Dean Middleton