The Archive - what's here and how to use it...
Subscribing to Truckarchive helps finance the archiving of the photographic and film history of the New Zealand road transport industry.
When you sign in – the menu above – (Home – The Archive – What’s new – Classic pix – Support us) – opens up to this expanded menu –
What's new...
What’s new is the short-cut to new content via hyper-link to save you the trouble of searching through the site.
Trucking Legacy
– offers up an ever-expanding collection of video clips about our industry-
Classic Pix -
Classic pix hosts many of the great photos and photo-shoots taken over the last 45 years – and draws upon a huge archive of over 20,000 images we are slowly scanning and uploading.
Classic Pix - The landscapes in which we work
Drawn from photo-shoots, commissioned work, calendar shoots for private and corporate clients – ‘Landscapes’ highlights one of the great joys of the job – the ability to glide through some of the most interesting landscapes that a road has been put through anywhere on the planet.
Added to weekly.
Classic Pix - By Brand / By Company
During the eighties – the golden era of trucking – the industry changed dramatically – and many companies and truck brands fell by the way, unable to adapt or keep-up with the unprecedented growth of the industry once the road transport industry was able to compete against rail without restrictions, when the industry deregulated in 1984.
These pages celebrate much of this era.
Organised by company and brand for simplicity in order for viewers to quickly narrow their focus – as this part of the site will be added to weekly and greatly expanded over time.
Free-to-view
Classic Pix - Looking Back
During my time as a photo-journalist for the trucking industry, it was one of my great sorrows that we were restricted to only a handful of images when laying-out a story – when we may have shot 100 or more in the field – and picture selection was always difficult with many a great shot left out due to space constraints.
Now we have the technology to host those ‘lost’ or never seen images.
This part of the site is expensive to scan and edit due to the huge number of images that will accumulate but it is well worth saving this resource.
It’s a bit rough around the edges at the moment in places, but I think we have found a cost effective way of illustrating this archive – time will tell!
Buy us a coffee level subscription
Resources
The resources pages offer the industry a resource to illustrate our industry in schools, technical institutes, forums, conferences and other places where we need to illustrate or showcase the capabilities of our industry.
We can tailor a sequence, or provide QR codes to direct an audience to a page.
Talk to us. We have a massive resource here – and a crisis looming if we don’t get people interested in a career with the industry.
Archives
Archives - Video
Before the advent of VHS, Beta and then digital video, few could afford the cost of 8mm or 16mm film, and apart from what the National Film Unit shot prior to the tv era, it is hard to find much footage pertaining to our industry – most involved in it were too busy working to be bothered with such nonsense.
And then there were guys such as Murray Francis who shot a lot of good stuff over the early years of Road Metals as they worked on many of the big projects in the South Island.
This part of the site is to ensure that there is at least another digital copy of the subject at hand, to ensure that that too is not lost to the mists of time.
Contact me if you think you have anything worth saving. The 1000th Mack clip below is a good example – rough as it is – of what we need to save.
Archives - HoF (Hall of Fame)
This menu offers up interviews with most of the living (at time of induction) inductees to the New Zealand Road Transport Hall of Fame.
It goes back to 2012 and films the introductory speech, and a short clip of the recipient reflecting on some aspect of their career in road transport.
The People menu hosts the full interviews (some of which lasted a couple of hours) with the inductees and others filmed over the last couple of decades for other productions – which are also a valuable resource that should be saved and protected.
As an example, here is Stan Williamson – a legendary figure in our industry – but also one of the nicest men you’ll ever meet, talking with us from 2016…
Archives - Photographic
This area houses in the main – older photographs and video content of a more historic nature – that are organised by make, company, application and collection (hidden or viewable/ watermarked or clear).
This part of the site is where we can either host or publish collections which are all crossed referenced between brand, company and sector to build a reference library of shots to illustrate the development of this industry – for example – a Burnett’s Ford Thornton carting wool would appear in at least three-places i.e. – By Brand – Ford, By Company – Burnetts, By Sector – Wool (or whatever it was carting).
This allows us to pool shots of Fords, trucks carting wool, (or concrete, fuel, livestock, logs etc) to build up a resource for books, video, research or the simple pleasure of viewing our road transport history by category.
A massive amount of time has been put into this side of Truckarchive, and there is still much to do, but we now have the architecture to build upon, enlarge and refine into what is one of the largest – and diverse – collections of its type worldwide.
