What's new...
Go to our facebook page as we upload new images to illustrate the depth of our archive.
This material is the resource from which we will be making new content as the years unfold….
Trucking Legacy
– offers up an ever-expanding collection of video clips about our industry- I am drifting a lot of my material to the Truckarchive Youtube channel, but we have a massive Vimeo archive from which to draw down content for new videos.
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.
Some of these will appear in our facebook page, others will be used to illustrate new stories in our Youtube space.
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 site has a large archive of – older photographs and video content of a more historic nature – that are organised by make, company, application and collection.
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.