Mark Troughear

As Chief Executive of Freightways, Mark Troughear has oversight of a hugely successful NZX-listed company that employs 5,000 staff across both New Zealand and Australia.

Appointed as CEO in 2018, the Waikato Management School alumnus says he was just starting to get comfortable in the job when Covid-19 hit.

After making some swift changes, what was then a $3 million courier business has grown exponentially into a $20 million business in just a few short years, says Mark.

Freightways is the parent company to a large number of brands, including New Zealand Couriers, Post Haste, DX Mail, Dataprint, and recent acquisition Big Chill Distribution.

They are also involved in secure document destruction and medical waste.

At first it looked as though Covid was very bad news for Freightways.

“We lost 65% of our business-to-business volume overnight in lockdown,” says Mark. “But when we went to Level Three, our business-to-consumer service skyrocketed, as people did much of their shopping online.”

With most Air New Zealand flights grounded in 2020, Freightways also made the brave decision to start their own international airline with the company’s own 737 planes, previously only used for domestic trips – a pretty complex undertaking, says Mark.

The company was then able to transport goods out of New Zealand and bring in items such as pharmaceuticals and PPE gear.

“Our document-based businesses dropped with a bang as people worked from home, but suddenly the need for medical waste disposal went through the roof … so we repurposed our trucks, trained our staff and leapt into the fray.”

We lost 65% of our business-to-business volume overnight in lockdown. But when we went to level three, our business-to-consumer service skyrocketed, as people did much of their shopping online.

Mark Troughear

When he left Rotorua to start university in 1988, Mark says he didn’t have a career path in mind.

As a first-year management student, he lived at Orchard Park. Mark really liked the campus environment, finding it friendly, relaxed and down-to earth.

He says university taught him to think issues through and analyse them; to face problems and deal with them.

Mark had planned to major in accounting, but after a year he switched to marketing.

“In my fourth year I took accounting theory, taught by Professor Howard Davey. He made what seemed dry sound interesting, and I often think if I’d done that paper in my first year I might have stuck with accounting,” he says.

Economics sticks out in his mind too. “One of the best lectures I recall was former finance minister Roger Douglas, who’d implemented major economic reforms that became known as Rogernomics. He came to a two-hour lecture and we were able to ask him anything we wanted.”

“Today we are dealing with economics all the time – simple but salient concepts such as elasticity of price, supply and demand.”

Mark graduated from Waikato with a Bachelor of Management Studies in 1992.

He started working at Freightways as a sales rep in 1996, and has worked his way up the corporate ladder over the last 26 years. He’s been involved in every aspect of the business – from sales management and brand development through to developing emerging businesses.

Mark says Freightways is always seeking out new opportunities for growth. For example, the company recently invested in a Hamilton-based business called SaveBoard, which is developing a low-carbon alternative to gib board, using recycled materials.

They have also built a 13,000sqm cold store facility at the Ruakura Superhub in Hamilton, to meet growing demand for chilled and frozen delivery services.