“We’ve always been with Mack, they’re good simple trucks.”

Barry Stamp’s fleet of Tridents and Super-Liners keep the concrete works and construction sites of Auckland and the Bay of Plenty well supplied.

Still going strong

Barry Stamp is the last man standing in a partnership that began in 1981, when a group of five owner-drivers got together and bought out Dibble Brothers, a business dating back to 1953, and renamed it Dibble Independent Transport (later Dibble Transport).

“There were five of us at the time,” recalls Barry, “but over the years the others have moved onto different things. My son Mitchell, who ran the workshop, has now bought out the bulk tippers and I will concentrate on the cement tankers.”

Based in Te Awamutu in Waikato, the company services the Auckland metropolitan area, and the Waikato Bay of Plenty region, delivering bulk goods and cement to concrete plants..

Clinker anyone?

The main ingredient of cement is clinker, small balls of limestone and clay fused together. This material comes in from overseas to the port of Tauranga, and Barry’s trucks transport it from the wharf to store at the cement works at Mount Maunganui for processing.

“The clinker is a sort of powder really,” says Barry, “so we cart it off the boats in aluminium quad tankers and take it to the mill.”

And in bulk

The company runs twelve bulk truck and trailer units, mostly Tridents, and four cement tankers carrying fertilizer lime and metal products in four and five-axle trailers.

“We’ve got a couple of 2007-model Super-Liners as well,” says Barry, “they’re our oldest trucks, but the rest are Tridents, most of which have the Mack MP8 535hp engine.”

The Trident was a sensible choice because of tare weight limitations, but Barry says this is becoming less of an issue nowadays.

“The tankers can load to 48 tonne,” he says, “while the rest are still running at 44 tonne, but the Tridents we’ve just bought will be on 50 Max or HPMV permits.”

A long association

“They’re good to deal with,” says Barry, “we’ve been buying from them since we started the business and they haven’t let us down. The Tridents with the MP8s are proving pretty reliable, and they really suit our operation.”