The Great New Zealand Road Trip: 18 simple rules driving an extraordinary business at the bottom of the world

Editor at large Shayne Currie is on a two-week road trip, to gauge the mood of the nation and meet everyday and notable Kiwis making a difference in their communities and wider world. Today we also meet Ngāi Tahu chief executive Arihia Bennett for Nine Questions With… and in the trip diary, the VW ID.5 makes it to Queenstown.

On the wall of Anthony Jones’ sparkling new corner office – offering expansive views of Invercargill and a glorious sunny Southland evening – is a small poster, “Bill’s Business Advice”.

The 18 tips are from a different era – “follow your nose”, “know your staff and their problems inside and outside the company”, “limit director numbers” and “managers must have an outside interest, it focuses the mind and provides relaxation”. (The full 18 tips are listed below).

But they are still relevant today in guiding one of New Zealand’s biggest and most extraordinary family businesses from the bottom of the country.

Bill in this case is Bill Richardson, a late, great Southland legend who built his company from one truck into a transport empire that now expands six different industries and is on the cusp of introducing extraordinary technology to drive a sustainable future, including part-hydrogen-fuelled trucks.

And Jones is a transplanted Aussie who today celebrates his two-year anniversary as chief executive of the business HW Richardson (HWR).

He admits people looked at him sideways when he arrived from Sydney but he has nothing but high praise for Southland, the community and his employer.

“I’d be getting my haircut and the hairdresser was saying, ‘What? You moved from Sydney to Invercargill? Most people go the other way.’ But it’s been awesome.”

Invercargill hadn’t been on the radar before the experienced transport firm executive was approached by a recruitment agency – there was no family here or any other connection and he hadn’t heard of HWR.

“That’s who we are. We are a humble Southland-based business who’s happy to be under the radar. We don’t seek – and the family definitely don’t seek – any limelight in that regard. We are proud of those humble roots and just getting on and delivering.”

HWR is one of New Zealand’s largest privately owned transport business, with 2700 workers here and in Australia. “Bill started with one truck and it’s now grown to 1300,” says Jones.

The company continues to grow, “building off good values, respecting its people and the community”.

But the Richardson family’s tentacles spread beyond just trucking and transport.

Shayne Currie is travelling the country on the Herald’s Great New Zealand Road Trip. Read the full series here.

The new head office today – an eight-floor, stylish high-rise that would be the envy of any Auckland office worker – is part of a property rejuvenation project in central Invercargill that is helping reinvigorate the city.

HWR has three of the floors. About 100 staff moved in in July.

The family also owns Bill Richardson Transport World, a tourism jewel for not just Southland, but New Zealand more generally, showcasing more than 300 vintage and classic vehicles in an expansive, refitted building.

Jones says he wants to work with, and for, good people; to be challenged; and to make a difference.

The owners of the company, Bill’s wife Shona Richardson and their daughter Jocelyn (Joc) O’Donnell and son-in-law Scott O’Donnell, are “just genuinely good people”.

They are passionate about their people and their community, he says.

“The motive here was about how do we bring the life back to the CBD. For Scott and Joc, it was really about bringing life back to the Invercargill CBD and the foot traffic that comes with that.

“How do we build Invercargill for the next 100 years?

“The family looked at that and said we can do something; we want to give back to Invercargill. We want Invercargill to be a town where people are proud of and can call it home.”

Jones loves the way New Zealand does business, compared to the sometimes more ruthless approach across the Ditch.

“The way New Zealand does business actually was probably the attraction. There’s a lot to like about that.

“We are a nation of five million people and your handshake is your word and your word’s your handshake, so to speak.

“There’s a lot of still old values here in New Zealand, which I’ve come to know more since living in the country.”

He remembers buying two motorbikes for his young sons as he prepared for a new life in Invercargill with his wife and four children, a daughter aged 15 and three sons aged 12, 10 and 7.

He rang the local dealer, who he’d never met before.

“I’m waiting for him to ask for my credit card … he never asked for it, he locked in the delivery time. I finally said, ‘Do you need my credit card?’ and he said, ‘Nahh, we know where you live, it’s all good.’

“And it wasn’t in a threatening way – you know, ‘we know you’re good for it’.”

Jones’ own leadership style reflects that of Bill Richardson’s business principles.

“I’m pretty sure if I came in here and tried to tell New Zealanders how to do things in an arrogant way, I would have been quickly shipped back on a plane.

“That’s the thing I like, that you can’t hide. You’ve got to be who you are. You’ve got to be true to your word.”

Among his business philosophies, Jones says he unashamedly advises his team to steal and adapt the best ideas. “Look to where we can learn from. And that’s the case with hydrogen – we didn’t recreate the wheel; we just partnered with people out of Europe who have been doing it for a bit longer.”

The company is leading the charge on introducing a fleet of dual hydrogen-fuelled trucks in New Zealand.

“We could have sat back; we could have let change happen around us, but that’s not who we are. We like to be the change that we want to see,” says Jones.

“And so for us, we were playing with hydrogen for around about two years with onboard electrolysers – little units that took distilled water and converted that into hydrogen on board and injected it in.”

By early 2024, the company plans to have opened the first hydrogen refuelling station in Southland, and eventually have 20 dual-fuel trucks in its fleet.

Two of them are already operating. “It’s pretty exciting for us.”

Jones says for a transport firm hauling big payloads, hydrogen was the preferred solution. With a dual hydrogen-diesel system, freight loads do not need to be reduced.

“Ours aren’t zero emissions but they are a transitionary fuel tech. You can take any truck and you can retrofit it with dual fuel and offset the carbon emissions by 40 per cent.

“That’s the equivalent of taking 15 cars off the road.”

According to HWR’s website, “the dual-fuel system involves retrofitting the hydrogen system to an existing diesel combustion engine. The hydrogen used to fuel the truck is stored as a gas in tanks on a frame behind the cab of the truck. The tanks can hold 5kg of hydrogen each.”

While diesel is the “pilot” fuel, “hydrogen is injected during the engine’s intake stroke and mixed to be uniform and homogeneous during the compression stroke”.

The company is literally driving one of the biggest and most exciting sustainability projects in New Zealand.

While Jones still foresees some economic grey clouds on the horizon for New Zealand – and he’s witnessed first-hand the challenges facing the rural sector – he is optimistic for the country.

“We’ve done it before. We’ll do it again. We’ll pull through and see those green pastures.”

Now that we’re through an election cycle, there is more certainty about the future.

He wants politicians more closely aligned with business to help New Zealand be as competitive as possible in the global economy.

“As [a] business, and the one thing I do like to say is, we’re not the enemy. Private enterprise is not the enemy. Quite the opposite. We actually want the same outcome.

“For us, it’s about delivering that high-quality service for the right price so that New Zealand exporters can get their product to market.”

For his own business, it’s also about shedding the “bias” of incumbency.

“We look to the future so we just don’t have that, ‘well, what’s got me here till today is going to carry me into the future’.

“It’s got you here so don’t forget it, but also don’t lose sight of the future and the horizon and always be willing to adapt and change. That’s what this business does do amazingly well.”

He says the number 8 wire mentality in New Zealand still exists.

“I wouldn’t have known about that two years ago. It’s deep in the DNA and there’s a lot of pride in that DNA. As we mature as humans and society, the same entrepreneurial spirit or innovative spirit is there, it’s just on different things.”

The spirit of Bill Richardson lives on, not just throughout the business – but ingrained in those words in the CEO’s office.

“Often, when you go into some businesses, the values are on the wall,” says Jones.

“But here they’re not just on the wall, we live them every day. It’s nice to see that Bill’s legacy is lived out every day.”

Bill Richardson’s Business Advice