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Winter work for a Nupin Distributors K Series.
When Freight Lines bought a company, they kept the name and didn’t change the branding driveway and had to back-up. Dad just sat and watched us but that’s how we learned.” Barry made the move from working for both Nupin and Freight Lines to a bigger role with Jim Barker’s company. “The catalyst for the sale was when the rail was bought out by a group including Wisconsin Central from America. They came in and offered these bloody ridiculous rates, but they didn’t have the service delivery.” The Nupin name didn’t immediately disappear from the highways. “When they [Freight Lines] bought a company, they kept the name and didn’t change the branding,” says Barry. “Then as the gear came up for replacement the old branding gradually disappeared. They [Bulk Lines] still have Nupin Distributors - it’s essentially a holding company for them and the Bulk Lines trucks still operate under the Nupin Distributors TSL licence.” Keith, Barry and Glen all went to work for Freight Lines. “When they took us over, I stayed working for them for about three years but over time they bought their people in and I backed out,” says Keith. However, Keith hasn’t ventured very far from the empire Jim Barker built and semi-retirement in Picton sees him working as a StraitNZ patch driver, moving trailers on and off the Bluebridge ferries with the tugs. 48 | Truck & Driver
Glen stayed for about six years before establishing a security company in Tauranga and Barry became the Freight Lines CEO for a 13-year stretch. For more than 20 years the Nupin name only existed in the Freight Lines company and license documentation. It was in late 2021 when the first ideas for Nupin Transport began to take shape. “Glen was working for PRH (Paengaroa Road Haulage), and they were getting out of trucks. We were just yacking and throwing a lot of things at the wall to see what would stick. And everything stuck,” says Barry. The first move was to buy four trucks from PRH to do container work, an area where Glen specialised for both Freight Lines and PRH. In mid-2023 there are now five Nupin trucks, plus three ownerdrivers and a varying number of sub-contractors. “Some days we are running 10 or 15 trucks,” says Glen. “We’ve now taken on a couple of flat decks and branched out into curtain siders. We are using the sub-contractors as the doors open for us and then we’ll build up the fleet. “We are trying to be versatile. We’ve got one tipping skelly, the flat decks and now we’ve got a dedicated tractor unit.” It’s the most recent addition to the fleet that has put the spotlight on the Nupin glory days. The 2018 Kenworth K200 8x4 has recently been painted in a similar design to the original Nupin blue striped colours with a
