Jim has been with TR Group since 2008! After a decade of being in the TR rental team, he still finds something new when he comes to work every day. He’s currently our Auckland Rental Manager, loves V8’s, and can tell you the most peculiar rental stories about monster trucks and dirt bikes.
TR Group rental - everyday's a new day.
It’s been nearly a decade since I joined the TR rental team and all those years have led to a great career with a great team, with a great company.
Ten years isn’t a short time, so you may be wondering, how anyone, really, could possibly stay in one company for this long. Well first, a love for trucks is the main fuel to the fire. There are so many reasons why I love what I do but what I want to talk about are some of the interesting stories you come across when you’re a part of the rental team.
We’ve got about 1,300 trucks and trailers in our rental fleet, servicing several varied roles, from building New Zealand’s motorways and infrastructure to hauling furniture. We know every unit inside out and spend a lot of time organising permits for the vehicles, ensuring we’ve got the right gear available for the job, and we even organise branding on some occasions.
Around eighty percent of our rental customers know the specific gear they want since they’re already in the trucking industry, but once in a while we get some really interesting requests coming through.
We were once asked by an events manager what gear he could use to transport 50 MX bikes across the country. He oversaw the operations for Nitro-Circus and had tight deadlines to meet and he certainly couldn’t have his gear getting damaged during transportation. We sorted him out with an 8-wheeler truck and trailer with mezz floors.
We put together a rental for a client who needed to move an aeroplane from Napier to Kaikoura. The plane was in the process of being built so we set up a transporter, 3-axle semi and 3-axle tractor which we felt was the best combination for the task.
An interesting rental went out to a customer who needed to move hundreds of bee hives from Waipu to Owhango. Our solution was an 8-wheeler flat deck truck.
And to top it all, we sorted out the gear needed to move a Monster Truck around Auckland, using a 3-axle loader and tractor unit to ensure it got where it needed to be.
There’s always something new to move from point A to point B, and it’s always exciting for us truck lovers at TR to be part of that every single day. Having a love for trucks as we all do means this is the kind of career where you don’t need to “work” a day in your life.