Mini Big Rigs

When your birthday comes around you hope and pray for awesome presents. So when Conroy Removals turned 50 they were absolutely blown away with the incredible gift they received from one of their longstanding employees.

Conroy Remov- als as we see it today dates back to 1972, where a 21-year-old David Conroy was looking for an opportuni- ty to start out in the transport industry. David approached a local Napier-based furni- ture removal contractor. A little negotiation and some financial support from his mother, and David purchased the business complete with one petrol-powered D Series Ford.

Eighteen months later a second truck was purchased, a TK Bedford. At this time, David’s brother Gary joined the business as a partner and started driving the TK. These early days for the business had the brothers driving country-wide, moving families and businesses, all the while Mum was back at home base manning the phone and looking after administration. Fifty years on, Conroy Removals now employs nearly 350 team members across twelve branches throughout New Zealand and Australia. A true Kiwi business success story that has been built on strong family values by both David and Gary.

One of those team members is our friend Doug Elliott. Some readers will remember Doug from the story we featured in the February 2022 issue of New Zealand Trucking magazine. In that story, we featured the Alf Walling Mack replicas that Doug had scratch built. Well we are treated once again, as this month we look at three of Doug’s latest builds. Chatting with Doug we learn that he has been with Conroy’s for the best part of 34 years. He has loved every minute of working for the family. “They are an awesome company to work for, you definitely feel that you are a part of the family, and not just another cog in the gearbox,” says Doug. So for Doug, when the idea of a 50th birthday celebration was discussed, there was only one thing for it – head to the workshop and replicate some of those great Conroy memories as a lasting gift to the family.

And the winners are…well, to be fair, we feel that absolutely everyone was a winner on the day.

The running of our inaugural ‘Create a Truck’ competition has blown all our expectations out of the water. You guys and gals have really got stuck into this. The level of imagination has been quite liter- ally off the scale, well done to everyone.

We have seen it all, from Kiwi fruit slices as wheels right through to working LED headlights. Even disconnecting trailers complete with landing legs, the list goes on. So as you can imagine, the judging of all the entries was going to be a difficult task. However, we had an ace up our sleeve, with good mate Craig Christensen stepping up to the plate for us as our guest judge, thank you Craig. Some of you will recognise Craig from the August 2022 issue of New Zealand Trucking magazine where we featured Craig on our Mini Big Rigs pages. Our story on Craig’s model truck building abilities, creating model trucks out of household items and waste, was the very inspiration for this competition.

We also say a big thank you to the team at Italeri truck kit sets for coming on board as our sponsor and providing the major prizes for us. Italeri truck kit sets are an absolute pleasure to build with accurately fitting parts as well as immense levels of detail, so we are sure that our class winners are truly going to enjoy every minute building their well-earned prizes.

Without further ado we bring you the contestants and winners of the inaugural 2022 ‘Create a Truck’ competition.

All we can say is bring on next year – we cannot wait to see what you all dream up and build next time around!