Transpac links with door-to-door firm

Press, 4 November 1986, Page 22

Transpac links with door-to-door firm

By

NEILL BIRSS

Transpac Holdings, Ltd, the former Transport North Canterbury Holdings, has moved into the top of the North Island with the acquisition of Mainline Coachways, Ltd. Transpac, with about 500 trucks and expected turnover for the current financial year of close to $9O million, obtains a fastgrowning parcel and bus service in the biggest market in the country.

Mainline takes a shareholding in Transpac and uses the national trucking company’s line-haul vehicles and depots for its New Zealand-wide Metrolink parcel and courier services.

Details of the share issue by the listed Transpac were not reported in the circulated statement

to the Stock Exchange yesterday. Mainline’s managing director is Mr Don Mcßeth, formerly of Midland Coaches, Christchurch. Mr Mcßeth’s father was a Midland bus driver who later set up his own parcel service in Christchurch.

Mr Don Mcßeth says he was almost born on a Midland bus. His father was the driver based at Cooper’s Creek, and rushed his pregnant wife to the Oxford Hospital in the Midland bus. The hospital was where Don Mcßeth was bom, but it was a near-run thing.

Mr Mcßeth worked in his father’s delivery service after school, and later was a Midland executive, but left when the purchaser of the line, Ceramco, began paring

off its branches. In 1982 Don Mcßeth, his wife, and his brother, took over Mainline in Auckland. It ran bus services from Auckland to the Bay of Plenty. It is now about five times as big. The passenger services have been retained, but the growth has been in door-to-door parcel delivery. With deregulation, this has been one of the fast-est-growing sectors of transport in New Zealand. Mr Mcßeth says Mainline set out to fill a demand then not being met by the Railways Road Services. The Railways has since lifted its service, but Mainline is established. Mainline runs a network of services to Auckland suburbs, with consolidation at its depot. Its parcel freight will feed

into Transpac’s longer-dis-tance trucking routes. Don Mcßeth *was in Wellington yesterday opening a branch of the parcel delivery operations, and his brother was in Christchurch opening another branch. Mainline has about 85 employees and has branches in Auckland, Hamilton, Matamata, Rotorua, Mount Maunganui, Taupo and Napier. Mr lan Guise, executive general manager of Transpac, said the agreement gave his company an excellent entry into the Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty and Hawke’s Bay regions. “Mainline’s local abilities coupled with Transpac’s national network will form a very efficient and comprehensive freighting operation,” he said.