Earthmover. Entrepreneur. Icon. A tribute to Danny Lendich, whose legacy shaped the construction and trucking industries for over five decades.
For some reason, I never thought Danny Lendich would die. He and his machinery just seemed to be there during my formative childhood years through to adulthood and dare I say it, senior years. But, despite my flawed thinking, here I was standing at the Whenuapai yard with hundreds of others, attending Danny’s funeral, shortly after a convoy of Lendich Construction trucks arrived with the casket.
The service itself was a lengthy affair, as close relatives and friends relayed their thoughts and feelings to an attentive audience. It’s probably fair to say that everyone had a decent tale to tell, such was Danny’s influence across the earthmoving industry, Wendy’s restaurants, and Speedway motorsport.
While I can only really say that I was an acquaintance through my father who knew him better, I did spend many years in the same industry and have subsequently now spent many years writing about it.
I was about six or seven years old when I first met Danny. It’s a strong memory and would have been around 1971, just after he had delivered an ancient Fordson tractor to my parents’ west Auckland block where they were going to plant a couple of acres of watermelons. The selected spot was thick clay and too dense for their smaller equipment, so a large running relic complete with steel wheels and heavy-duty rotary hoe had been sourced.
Danny was a client of my uncle Bob who ran a successful west Auckland dental practice. Bob was kind of the fixer in the family, so I’m sure some deal was done for the transportation.
I remember his Commer transporter turning up, which was painted much like the iconic Kenworth’s to follow – although the LENDICH name displayed prominently across the trucks and equipment, would have still been a couple of years off from being seen around town.
And even as a young child I remember noticing the Commer that day was spotless, more so once the small debris was swept from the deck. Even though we were small kids, my brothers and I were truck mad, so we noticed things like that.
Back then, not too many businesses kept their equipment in the condition that Danny kept his, most others considering them tools of the trade. Danny’s wife and business partner Dianne realised that all of the equipment were moving billboards and just the name was enough to get attention. Even today, you will still see that any job their earthmoving equipment is parked on will have the largest LENDICH sign facing the road.
It wouldn’t have been too long after the tractor was delivered to my parents, Danny purchased their first Kenworth truck (1972) and while there would have been a few around back then, most would have been carting logs far away from suburbia.
Like their other Kenworths that followed, a sturdy bathtub trailer was fitted allowing for large signage along each side. Interestingly, the rear tailgates weren’t signwritten, perhaps because Danny liked to look forward and not backwards.
Danny would have been one of the first (if not the first) to put something like that to work in the earthmoving industry. The only other big gear I recall in the game back then was Mate Milich’s two R-model Mack truck and trailer tippers. He was another west Aucklander who saw the benefits of American iron, others were to follow.
I understand that Danny purchased their second Kenworth in 1974, being followed soon after by what would be the most prominent truck in the fleet due to its sleeper cab, his Kenworth transporter. The truck came out of Seattle and was extensively rebuilt to Danny’s requirements, including a new 650 horsepower K19 Cummins engine. The 40 gears and two-speed differential made it ideal for moving the large loads that the truck would find itself hauling.
So, all of this fitted nicely into the worldwide trucking craze that co-incidentally arrived from the U.S. at the same time in the mid-1970s. For those that didn’t experience it, this was something else again and it really placed truck drivers on a pedestal, acknowledging their importance. The craze was mostly focused on long-haul U.S. truck drivers and Citizen Band (CB) radios. Nothing like it has ever followed.
Danny would have taken full advantage of the craze and any marketing opportunities it afforded. The Kenworth transporter was seen by kids every weekday afternoon on the opening intro of the Here’s Andy TV show. With no internet back then and only two TV channels, for truck-mad kids it was a big deal. I even recall seeing a picture in the newspaper of then-Prime Minister Robert Muldoon sitting in one of Danny’s trucks.
More trucks, Kenworth of course, followed over the intervening years and through the 1980s and 1990s Danny’s pristine gear was visually still way ahead of the rest. Sure, we were starting to see other trucks around that looked slick, but Danny’s gear made a statement when you saw it. He capitalised on the moving billboards in the early 1990s when promoting his Wendy’s restaurant chain by fitting temporary ‘Wendy’s’ signs to the rear of some of his trucks for a time. One of the drivers I spoke to back them took it in his stride, telling me that “Lendich was the boss.”
Danny’s requirements for equipment presentation both inside and out were high. Considering no one ever thought about taking their steel-capped boots off during the day back then, his drivers found it easier to wear slip-on steel caps, removing them to drive in their socks. It didn’t matter what job they were working on, the next day the trucks would turn up all clean and ready for action. The drivers and operators took immense pride in the equipment they operated and it’s easy to see that remains to this day.
On one particular job I was working on in the 1990s, we wondered why Danny’s trucks were a couple of hours late turning up only to be told that the quarry haul road was wet, so they were instructed to wait until it had dried enough. Another time a few of their trucks were hauling demolition into a cleanfill site that I was managing for the day. Danny turned up to check in and looked at a tyre-scuffed kerb.
“I hope that wasn’t one of my trucks,” was his first comment.
Although I never worked for Danny, I would imagine that he would have been a hard taskmaster and not suffer any kind of tomfoolery or backchat, regardless of how well intended it may have been delivered to him. For some, his exacting standards were much higher than other company owners’ and would have been difficult for many to meet. To be on the receiving end from any error or lack of judgement wouldn’t have ended up well for anyone, be it an employee or just someone connected to the current job.
Like Kenworth, Caterpillar was his brand of choice for machinery and back in the day his gear was seen on many of the large excavation jobs. The business specialised in a lot of different work, such as big gear transportation and demolition, but I really think that he was in his happy place moving dirt – lots of it. Whatever he took on, it was done professionally. Probably not the cheapest but done well.
Unlike a lot of other contractors who ran their gear into the ground then purchased new, Danny preferred to refurbish and upgrade equipment in his workshop, often storing it away until needed. The older gear still looks and likely operates as good as the day it arrived in his yard.
As the years have passed and in today’s disposable society, some probably question the need to do such a thing anymore, but unlike many others, Danny’s business remains to this day and is a testament to the drive and tenacity of a person who demanded the best and followed through on it.
The last time I had a conversation with Danny would have been sometime around 2018, which in these fast times only seems like the recent past. I stumbled on his ute parked in a central Auckland side street, him sitting in his regulation shorts, polo shirt and slip-on boots, busy on the phone delivering instructions to an employee, I presume.
“Danny ‘bloody’ Lendich,” was my opening line and we sat there in his ute for about 20 minutes talking about the current state of the industry.
“Geez boy, you need to come out and see me,” he said before leaving. “I’ve got heaps of stuff I need to tell you.”
Regretfully, I didn’t make that trip and often wish I did, but it’s good to see that others have done a better job of recording his history than me. I am quite sure that he wouldn’t have become the person he was without the behind-the-scenes work of his wife Dianne, family and many others, but he was the face of the business and consequently got all the limelight.
Something he probably never realised was the influence he had on people who wanted to follow in his footsteps. I was one of them.
Images by Ed and Supplied