Book review: The Refrigerated Freight Lines story
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Lyndsay Whittle takes an A to Z look at the Refrigerated Freight Lines (RFL) trucking empire in a book called RFL—An Innovative Kiwi Trucking Business
Being blessed with a handle as impressive as ‘Leonard Patrick Aloysius Malaghan’, great expectations must surely have been placed on the recipient way back in 1906, however, it was going to take the passage of a further 40 years before the expectation of great doings would bear any fruit, or in his case, ice cream.
‘Len’ Malaghan, as he became known, at the age of 18 in 1924, had become a qualified cheesemaker at a Southland dairy cooperative, however, greener pastures were beckoning, which meant a move north to Wellington to take up a post with the Department of Agriculture.
There he was offered yet another apprenticeship in the art of ice cream making, under the watchful eye of two Americans who had been brought to New Zealand to develop a local ice cream industry.
After two years of learning this new craft, he moved back to the South Island to Dunedin where he took up a position with the Royal Dairy Company. The Royal Dairy Company supplied local businessman Albert Hayman, who owned a tearoom in the Octagon with their products, and it didn’t take long for the two men to become friends. Seeing that the relatively new concept of ice cream was swiftly gaining popularity with New Zealanders, they set up a 50/50 partnership.
While Albert (Bert) remained in Dunedin and Len, who was newly married at the time, moved north to Wellington to open up the city’s first milk bar in 1936. The enterprise was a huge success, so Len opened a second milk bar on Lambton Quay a couple of years later.
Due to his involvement with the South Island-based Royal Dairy Company, Len was able to source all of his ice cream products from them, with the product being transported by ship.
This arrangement seemed to work well for a time, but it wasn’t long before Bert, who by now had moved to Auckland, and Len decided to become manufacturers as well as retailers.
Under their own manufacture of ice cream, they coined the name Tip Top (the reason is explained in the book), which, of course, is a brand we all still identify with to this day.
Now, in his early 40s, Len still wouldn’t have had the foggiest notion that he was about to embark on a venture in which he would create an iconic refrigerated transport company, much less a giant corporation called General Foods Ltd.
In 1949, Tip Top introduced a classy-looking articulated Leyland Comet 75 into service on the North Island long-haul route. The truck was fitted with a McAlpine Refrigeration unit to keep the cargo at the correct temperature.
In the 1950s, the directors decided to separate the transport operation from the parent company, naming it Frozen Foods Transportation or FFT for short. A rapid expansion of the fleet soon followed, mainly due to Len’s policy of buying-out opposition refrigerated transport businesses as they came on the market.
In 1951, two Auckland businessmen had formed a transport company that they called Refrigerated Freight Lines (Hawke’s Bay) Limited; this entity was the first of what would be many opposition purchases made by Len and Tip Top Ice Cream.
Stories abound throughout the book of the pioneering spirit of the drivers who traversed the likes of the Napier-Taupo highway when it was an unsealed dustbowl in summer and a bog in winter, all done in trucks that were hugely underpowered by today’s standards.
The book is a warts-and-all account of the company’s early days, recounting tales from some of the drivers, who were true professionals and even a story of one who definitely wasn’t.
Without spoiling too much of one tale, a hapless chap was given the job of taking a truck and trailer unit through to Taupo from Auckland in the 1960s but only got as far as Te Kauwhata before he rolled the trailer on a corner. Miraculously, he was able to unhitch it and carry on his way with only half a load aboard.
The account of the rest of this guy’s trip is absolutely hilarious, although, I imagine his boss wouldn’t have seen the funny side of his antics at the time. Anyway, I’ve already said too much; you’ll have to buy the book to read the rest, but trust me, it’ll be well worth the purchase price (check out the photo on page 36 that supports the story).
The book has more such photos on every page, albeit some of the earlier shots aren’t all that sharp but are nevertheless good enough to bring back memories to those who are old enough to remember seeing the iconic blue and white rigs on the road.
Len, unfortunately, didn’t live a particularly long life; in the 1960s, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a blood cancer that was known at the time as Hodgkin disease and died in 1967 at the age of 63.
Len’s son Graham was appointed general manager of the company in 1969 and like his father before him, Graham expanded the operation into Australia, South Africa, with further services to Asia and beyond.
Expansions of the transport side of the operation, however, were just the tip of the iceberg (to coin a phrase) with a frozen chicken business and even a giant fast-food franchise being brought under the General Foods umbrella in a relatively short timeframe.
RFL—An Innovative Trucking Business takes the reader on a fantastic journey following the pioneering spirit of two Kiwi blokes who forged an enterprise that was so far removed from their original chosen callings that it seems almost fantastical.
It’s an absolute must-read not only for truck drivers young and old but also for anyone involved at any level in the transport and logistics industry and especially, especially for anyone considering completing a commerce degree.
Copies of the book can be purchased for $55 from offthepress.co.nz.
A donation of $5 from the sale of each book is being made to the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research, an independent biomedical research institute with a focus on breakthrough discoveries in immunology and immunotherapy.
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