Sandy Walker started work at the age of 13, and despite his best efforts to retire, he’s still trucking on, using his experience and expertise to help the Heavy Haulage Association as its oversize roading advisor, explains Mary Searle Bell.
Sandy was born and raised in Hastings, one of seven kids to a mother who was widowed when Sandy was only eight.
Things were tight and Sandy wanted to help the family, so when he was just 13, he got a job as a bottle washer at Curly Top Cordials through the Christmas holidays. When he was due to go back to school in January, the owner offered him a full-time job.
“I’d leave home in the morning in my school uniform, change into overalls, do a day’s work, change back into my uniform, and head home. I’d often go home with a loaf of bread or meat, which I’d pass off as gifts from friends.”
His plan worked well until October that year, when his mother headed to school for parent-teacher interviews.
“When she came home she said, ‘the teachers say the girls are doing very well, but they didn’t mention your name’. So, I confessed. Fortunately, she was happy, and I continued at the cordial factory for another year.”
Joining the transport industry
Sandy’s father had been a truck driver for Fraser Shingle, as was his brother, and Sandy would take any opportunity he got to ride along in the cab. He started to go to work with his brother in the weekends and was offered work during a holiday, which he quickly said yes to.
“I kept being offered more labourer/dogsbody work, and after two weeks I made the decision to join the transport industry. That was the one day the boss didn’t ask me to come in the next day, so I went to him and said, ‘do you need me tomorrow?’ He said, ‘just keep coming in until I tell you to stop’. So, I did, for the next 17 years!”
Having spent those years driving all over the country, Sandy decided he wanted to be an owner-driver. He came very close to it too, but on the day the deal was due to be signed, it all fell through at the last minute.
“At 4pm a mate picked me up to go and have a beer at Emmerson Transport, and by 7pm I had another job. I stayed there as operations manager for the next 14 years.”
That company did a little bit of over-dimension work and this caught Sandy’s interest.
“I went out and started getting my A, B, and C pilot’s licenses – halfway through, the system changed to Class 1 and Class 2, so I was automatically given my Class 1 certificate, and I have been a Class 1 pilot ever since.
“We got into more and more over-dimension work – not heavy stuff, but things like steel framing, etc.
“One of my most memorable moves was back in the early 2000s, taking a new submarine and its docking down to Milford Sound from New Plymouth – we had 14 loads in total over a 10 day period.”
From then on, he started getting interest from other transport firms wanting piloting work and he started to contract out his services through the company.
In 2003, he purchased his own piloting business, hiring three staff.
“Pilot vehicles are quite expensive, and I opted to go all-terrain – we could go into the bush, into goldmines. If anyone asked if we could do it, the answer was always yes.
“We always had a lot of interesting work. One of the biggest was a 17-month project taking windmills from the Port of Napier to Manawatu. And in our prime, we were moving four houses a week.”
Then the Global Financial Crisis hit and Sandy had to make the hard decision to let staff go. He then had to go out himself and get part-time work to prop the business up.
“We limped through, but it was a bad financial mistake.”
Sandy sold the business in 2014, filling his time with a bit of driving for transport companies.
However, in 2005, Sandy had taken a part-time job as Area Manager for the Road Transport Association. It was a flexible 25-hour week role, which allowed him to fit it around his other work.
He held the position for 20 years, while the organisation changed around him, eventually becoming Transporting New Zealand.
In 2023 he retired. That lasted 15 hours!
“I got a phone call saying, ‘you’re coming to work for me’.”
His new job had Sandy overseeing a transport firm with seven depots throughout the country.
“We were having real trouble getting drivers so I hopped onto a plane to the Philippines to assess drivers, with the aim to bring back 50.
“I had to sit in the truck with them and assess their driving ability, their English language skills, education, and experience – the terrain and conditions they had driven in. I found many had served in other countries, driving heavy vehicles like fuel tankers, and this makes for very safe drivers.
“They were all comfortable driving 120-tonne trucks and were familiar with both US and European gear. Their work ethic was excellent and they were naturally a good fit for us.
“We had hired 30 when we realised that these new drivers had made the whole company lift its game, and we didn’t need the full 50 after all.”
The HHA calls
Around 18 months ago, Jonathan Bhana-Thomson, CEO of the Heavy Haulage Association, phoned Sandy, asking him to act as the oversize roading advisor, dealing with operators having issues when moving loads.
“There was a bit of conflict between road workers and drivers of oversized loads – argy bargy around things like road cones being knocked over when big loads came through worksites.
“I found a clause in the Traffic Management Plan that says the Heavy Haulage Association must be consulted before roadworks begin on heavy haulage routes.
“So, I formulated a two-page form, stipulating the conditions we need to continue to run our businesses during roadworks – you can’t just shut down a road for a month. Anyone working on Auckland Transport’s heavy haulage routes now have to have a route analysis done before starting roadworks.”
This is a form Sandy fills out for each job, stipulating things like cones are to be placed 3.5 metres apart, not 2.5, which means the big loads won’t knock them over, and that resealing equipment is parked well out of the way of big loads coming through, rather than simply on the side of the road where they could get in the way of a large load.
“This is all detailed on the form and the contractor reads it and accepts it and puts it into their traffic management plan. It’s a simple solution to an ongoing problem – it maintains the 11-metre-wide, 6.2-metre-high window needed for oversized loads.
“It’s been working like a charm since we implemented it in mid-April 2025. It would be great to see it rolled out throughout the rest of the country, although we would have to find some way to fund it rather than having the HHA pay for my time.”
Sandy has also written guides that are sent out to worksites with traffic management plans letting them know what oversize loads they can expect to come through and what the various lights and signage on the pilot vehicles mean.
His passion for the industry and love of big trucks has seen Sandy give his time in other ways. He’s on a couple of different trusts, and his work and philanthropy all feed into each other.
“The RTF started ‘Ride in a Truck Day’ to raise funds for child cancer and educate the public about trucks on the roads. I looked after the Hawke’s Bay’s efforts, and we raised over $7000 in that first year. The public loved it. It was supposed to be a biannual thing but when the RTF decided not to go ahead with it, our local branch did anyway. It still happens every other October.
“So far the money we have raised has fully funded a $1.7 million complex that has been built opposite the hospital to provide accommodation for people with family in hospital.
“This is the work of the Little Elms Charitable Trust, named after LE Elms, which was, fittingly, an old transporting company that used to have its depot on the land opposite the hospital. They sold it to us for a very good price so we could build the complex.”
This charity work is simply an extension of Sandy’s love for the industry – he’s clearly very passionate about what he does, and he’s certainly not ready to retire (again) just yet. Instead, he’s happy to just keep trucking on.
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