New Zealand - Timber Industry
- Front on view of a Leyland truck transporting a single Kauri log along a dirt road
- ca. 1940s?
- Collins, Tudor Washington photographer
Leyland Trucks
- A medium- and heavy-duty truck manufacturer based in Leyland, Lancashire, England.
- It can trace its origins back to the original Leyland Motors, which was founded in 1896, and subsequently evolved into British Leyland.
- After British Leyland became the Rover Group in February 1986, the truck business was spun out and merged with DAF Trucks to form DAF NV, operating as Leyland DAF in the United Kingdom.
- After DAF NV was placed in administration, in June 1993, Leyland DAF was purchased in a management buyout and rebranded Leyland Trucks.
- It has been a subsidiary of Paccar since April 1998.
(Reference: Wikipedia)
Kauri
- Kauri forests once covered 1.2 million ha from the Far North of Northland to Te Kauri, near Kawhia and were common when the first people arrived around 1,000 years ago.
- Maori used kauri timber for boat building, carving and building houses. The gum was used as a fire starter and for chewing (after it had been soaked in water and mixed with the milk of the puha plant).
- The arrival of European settlers in the 1700s to 1800s saw the decimation of these magnificent forests.
- Sailors quickly realised the trunks of young kauri were ideal for ships' masts and spars, and the settlers who followed felled the mature trees to yielded huge quantities of sawn timber of unsurpassed quality for building.
(Reference: read more at https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-plants/kauri/)
The value of all forestry exports (logs, chips, sawn timber, panels and paper products)
- $NZ 3.62 billion for the year ended 31 March 2006
- $NZ 5 billion in 2018
- Australia accounts for just over 25% of export value, mostly paper products, followed by Japan, South Korea, China and the United States.
- In 2018, wood products were New Zealand's third-biggest export
- Forestry accounted for approximately 3% of national GDP
- Directly employing 20,000 people
(Reference: Wikipedia)
Image source: Front on view of a Leyland truck transporting a piece of Kauri along a dirt road],Collins, Tudor Washington, 1898-1970, photographer,ca. 1940s?,PH-2013-7-TC-B160-09
https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/collection/object/am_library-photography-75776