OUR HISTORY

The bungalow was now being used as the office and Philip with partner Averil moved into the other older house to live. An open shed was built to house a docking saw and a machine for shaping the ends of pickets for fencing. Early on the bungalow was sold for removal to Kingsford St Burwood. A small building was then built that was suitable as an office and a place to stock commonly used builders hardware such as nails, rolls of building paper, bolts etc.

Back in the early days, frame making at Dyers Rd Timber was a hands-on process, with every piece crafted using traditional methods and a lot of hard work. Once completed, the frames were carefully loaded onto trucks, ready to be delivered to builders and construction sites across the region.

A similar second trailer is still used for smaller orders. These trailers came into their own for deliveries on some of the narrow twisting roads and driveways on the Sumner and Mt Pleasant hills where a larger truck wouldn’t fit. Other larger orders were originally done by contractors until it was considered necessary to purchase their own truck with a hi-ab.

Approximately 1994 land and building became available on the corner of Dyers Rd and Ruru Rd! This had a substantial concrete building on it that had been used previously by a t-shirt printing firm and proved suitable as a retail showroom with space for offices and potential room for a drive through to be built on the side.

Some members of the Caldwell family that have and currently work for are Keith’s son Daniel who started in the DRT yard when he left school. Daughters Holly and Celine in retail and Amber in the prenail despatch. Holly was also part of the business and worked from Hamilton where pricing of plans would be emailed to her. Brother Philip has been with Keith since the start and youngest brother Ian spent most of his working life with DRT before his tragic passing in 2011 in the Christchurch earthquake. Other family members include Philip’s daughters Lisa and Megan who have worked for DRT in the university holidays. Chris McIntosh who had been responsible for installing some of the gear in the prenail was later recruited as a supervisor and it turned out that he is a third cousin to Keith. Philip’s brother-in-law Melvin Lange who had previously worked in builders retail also joined DRT. Greg Harmon a childhood friend of Daniel’s was leading-hand in the frame and truss division for many years before setting up the Auckland Frame and Truss division. Keith Thompson who had been a yardman in the old yard returned as a rep. It could truly be called a family and mates outfit.

Around 2002 the empty Fibre-glass boat factory was leased to set up a finger jointing plant. Twisted, knotty or bent timber was cut into short lengths and a machine was then able to cut fingers in their ends so that they could be glued together. At a later stage a small building in Wickham St was leased for assembly of prehung doors, trellising and stand alone cupboards from particle board. As can be seen from the photo of the sign – “We cater for the home handyman”. Because of the coming of Mitre 10 to Ferrymead, and to a lesser extent Bunnings on Marshland Rd, there was less demand by the home handyman and DRT was able to reduce their opening hours and concentrate more on catering for the regular builders.

The 2011 earthquakes increased the demand for new houses in the Canterbury region and prenail frames and trusses. It was found that Luney’s building would not be able to cope with the demand. A nearby building which had housed the Dominator garage door factory on the corner of Wickham St and Maces Rd became available and although the building had sustained some earthquake damage, this was able to be repaired and after some alterations, some of the pre-nail manufacturing equipment was then moved in November 2012. The rest followed shortly after. Land across the road which had been the site of Pro-Metal needed to be demolished because of earthquake damage, this was also obtained to park trucks and other usage.