Keep On Moving Podcast Alan Tanner (replay) Jan 2026

This week it's the inaugural Classics Around the Coast classic truck run. One of the entrants is Alan and Lee Tanner's magnificent Mack Super-Liner, purchased new by them in 1981 and restored to full glory.

Back in the early 70s, Alan and Lee Tanner's sawmilling operation in Tairua on the Eastern Coromandel was ankle-tapped by the truck-killing topography of the region. Getting logs to the mill and product to the Auckland, Waikato, and Bay of Plenty markets left a trail of tired and expired inferior trucks. Then the big American machines arrived, and their world changed. From then on it was bonnets, power and torque and fleet of magnificent iron. The physical barriers had found their nemesis.

I recorded an interview with Alan a few years back called The Big Trucks of Tanner Sawmills – repeated here for your pleasure on Classics Around the Coast week.