Mr Stephen operates Southern Commercial Training which teaches how to operate trucks, forklifts, cranes and elevator work platforms.
“I’ve always been involved with teaching and showing people how to do stuff so it was a natural progression, I suppose.”
When looking for a truck to train for class 2, the only things he could find were “pretty rough wee tip trucks that had raced, rallied and rolled in their lifetime.”
“For about the same price I could buy a fire truck, so I thought why not?”
He found it on TradeMe from “a guy who had three of them and was downsizing”.
Although it still looked like a fire engine, he took off all of the signwriting referring to the vehicle’s previous life and replaced it with his own branding.
“I put my own spin with some of my colours — gold and purple but there’s also a bit of pink along the sides ... makes it different and stand-out.”
The 1993 fire engine is still fully functional, having lights, sirens, a hose and a pump.
Mr Stephen said people he taught took a while to get used to driving a fire truck, but overall they enjoyed it.
“You get a lot of attention driving through town ... a few of my routes go past schools ... we always get lots of waves.”
He works closely with adult and community education provider Southern REAP, which runs a programme called Drive My Life.
It aims to help people get their driver’s licence through lessons in driving theory and skills.
Mr Stephen works as a driving instructor part-time for REAP and said that quite a lot of his training is done with the organisation in mind.
“They’re the ones that take the training to the more rural areas.”
Southern Commercial Training is based in Winton and REAP has offices in Gore, Te Anau, and Winton.
