There are 25,260 people employed in the road transport industry according to the Statistics Department.

An estimated 15,000 more people are indirectly employed by the industry, providing services ranging from vehicle equipment and maintenance to legal and accounting advice.

With 5,095 individual firms, road transport is typical of most other industries in New Zealand. It’s largely made up of locally-based and family-owned and run businesses, often started by taking out a mortgage on the family home. More than half have been in business for a decade or more.

Most companies operate fewer than five trucks and have fewer than five people working for them.

The relatively few very large companies, with fleets of hundred or more vehicles, have often grown from straightforward trucking companies into sophisticated nationwide logistics operations. These provide a complete stock management and warehousing service, giving their clients the twin benefits of economies of scale and reduced need to invest in costly infrastructure such as warehousing.

With road transport businesses ranging in size from one-truck operations to fleets of one hundred or more, often specialised, vehicles, the road transport industry is uniquely equipped to provide exactly the type and level of service the customer requires.

Size / Make Up Of Fleet

Given its indispensable role and the huge freight task it carries out, the commercial road transport fleet is a tiny proportion, less than 2.5 %, of the total number of vehicles on the road.

In June 2007 there were 3,226,614 licensed vehicles in New Zealand. Of these 79,539 were “heavy vehicles”, or trucks weighing over 3.5 tonnes. Around 22,000 are operated by the road transport industry, not many more than the number of trucks owned by farmers.

Most of the heavier trucks are owned and operated by individuals and organisations not primarily involved in road transport: tradespeople, developers and contractors, local councils, manufacturers and other businesses.

One reason the commercial fleet is relatively small for the payload it hauls is that trucks have become increasingly efficient, with the amount of cargo carried growing twice as fast as the number of trucks over six tonnes over the past decade.