Haulage Parts opened for business approx June 1968 on the corner of Church and McGiffert Sts in Palmerston North.

In January 1980 a move was made to brand new purpose built premises occupying a large site on the Corner of Tremaine Avenue and Mohaka Place. This included a vehicle sales yard,  a 10000 sq ft building for parts warehousing, a  workshop and undercover dismantling with a massive outdoor dismantling yard out the back.

The Company was primarily set up to dismantle trucks for spare parts to on sell to farmers, contractors, bus companies, drilling companies, government departments, transport operators and trucking companies…..in fact anybody that used trucks. 

Vehicles suitable for dismantling were sourced from far and wide through the whole of the north island mostly coming from the likes of city councils, borough councils, local bodies, insurance companies, vehicle tenders, truck dealers, government stores board auctions and transport operators just to name a few. A lot of the trucks that Bill Hargreaves inherited from the Transport Wairarapa purchase were gradually dispatched to Haulage Parts over a period of time as they were replaced with more modern new ones. Most of the trucks that we purchased were either driven back to Palmerston North or towed back with one of our tow trucks. Some towing jobs were an enormous challenge to say the least by today’s standards. It was nothing to drive to places like Gisborne or Hamilton and back the same day with very limited horsepower and over roads that were not in great condition. Some old truck drivers will still recall the original Mangawekas before the deviations were built and the Desert Road as it was 50 years ago.  Two return trips to Wellington and back in the same day wasn’t unusual either, especially if we had bought a lot of trucks.  There were times when we purchased as many as 10 or 12 govt vehicles at the Govt Seaview disposal depot and we had to remove them within 48 hours. My favourite towtruck was a 1957 S model Bedford, 300 cubic inch petrol coupled to a 4 speed gearbox and a vacuum shift Eaton 16500 2 speed diff. She had had a Higher ratio bus crown wheel and pinion fitted and flew when she was empty but with another sometimes heavier truck on the hook you were using every one of those 8 gears and wishing you had more. Surprisingly enough we mostly got back home without any problems to speak of. That old S bedford was incredibly reliable. So….once a truck arrived at the Haulage Parts yard it was parked up wherever we could find room and then set upon with gas torches, a wide variety of spanners and general hand tools, sledge hammers, crowbars and a whole lot of sweat and effort. These were the days before the introduction of air tools, affordable hydraulic cranes and forklifts so there was a huge dependancy on physical labour. Not a second thought was given to manually lifting heavy items like gearboxes, driving heads, springs, driveshafts, it was all in a days work. That’s how we did it back then. We did have a yard crane though for lifting heavier things like cabs, engines and decks and tipper bodies. It was an x Power Board  tri-pole crane truck designed for lifting and installing power poles. It actually served the purpose very well and together with an x WW2 Dodge scout car with a front mounted boom and winch gave many years reliable service. The boom was adjustable and there were occasions where the front wheels came off the ground if you miscalculated the weight of what you were lifting. Eventually we purchased an x Manawatu Transport Ltd KH Leyland 400 Bedford flatdeck with a 3 tonne Hamilton hydraulic crane fitted. This crane proved invaluable with its larger lifting capacity and paid for itself many many times over when we shifted yards. 

As time went by the company expanded to include various lines of new truck parts and accessories, truck sales, landrover spare parts, landrover sales and light commercial van, utility and 4×4 spare parts and light commercial vehicle sales.