Our Fleet — Excavators, Trucks & Plant
Updated: Sep 4
Plant is the part of a civil job that either makes the programme or breaks it. If the right machine isn't on site when the dig is ready, the trench sits open, traffic management burns hours, and the head contractor's float quietly disappears. We built our fleet around that reality. Draeinail runs its own gear, maintains it, and crews it with operators who've spent years in trenches, not weeks.
We're a civil and drainage contractor with roughly twenty years on the tools, based in Pukekohe in South Auckland's Franklin district, and we hold a permanent crew in Queenstown as well. The team runs to about twenty-five people, registered drainlayers among them. Across infrastructure, drainage, subdivision and energy work, the fleet you'll read about below isn't a hire-desk list. It's owned, it's resourced from one yard, and it turns up on time because nobody upstream of us controls it.
This page walks through what we run, why each class of machine is on the books, and how we deploy it. If you're a developer, builder, project manager or head contractor weighing up who can self-perform a job rather than stitch together three subbies and a hire account, that's the question this answers.
Excavators: eleven machines, 5 to 35 tonnes
The core of any civil fleet is the excavator line, and ours spans eleven machines from 5 to 35 tonnes. That range isn't about having big toys. It's about matching the machine to the trench. A 35-tonne digger working a tight residential easement is wrong on every count: it can't get in, it tears the surface, and it's dangerous near services. A 5-tonner trying to bulk out a stormwater detention basin will still be there next month. Carrying the full spread means we put the correct machine on each task instead of forcing one size to do work it was never built for.
How the size classes get used
The smaller machines, roughly 5 to 8 tonnes, live in subdivision lots, footpath crossings, lateral connections and confined drainage work where reach and ground pressure matter more than dig depth. Mid-range machines handle the bulk of trunk drainage and pipe-laying; they've got the reach for a deep invert and the stability to track a pipe in cleanly. The heavy end, up to 35 tonnes, does bulk earthworks, deep stormwater, large-diameter pipe and anything where you're craning gear in and out of a long, deep trench. Because all of it sits in one fleet, we can scale a single job up or down as the ground throws up surprises, and run several work fronts at once on a larger programme without waiting on a hire booking.
Operators are competency-assessed, not just licensed. Setting a pipe to grade, working alongside live services, and reading a trench wall for movement are skills you earn over years. That's the difference between a machine that hits the invert first time and one that costs you a re-dig.
Lifting, handling and haulage
Earthmoving is only half of civil. The other half is getting pipe, manholes, precast and aggregate to the right point at the right time, then lifting it into place safely. Our materials-handling and haulage gear is built for exactly that.
Telehandlers and trucks
We run three JCB telehandlers. On a live civil site they earn their keep all day: unloading deliveries, shifting pipe stacks and precast around the lot, feeding the trench crew, lifting into excavations where a crane would be overkill. Reach and rough-terrain stability mean they go where a forklift won't. Alongside them sit our trucks and trailers, which keep spoil moving off site and materials moving on, so the dig never stalls waiting for a cartage subbie to show.
The articulated transporter
For relocating heavy plant between work fronts and yards, we operate an articulated transporter rated to 25 tonnes. That means we float our own machines. We don't book a transport company and lose half a day to their schedule; when a 30-tonne digger needs to move from one stage of a subdivision to the next, or down to the next job, we move it ourselves on our timeline. On a multi-front programme that self-sufficiency is the difference between keeping every crew productive and having a machine idle on the wrong side of town.
Drainage and dewatering plant
Drainage is where most of the specialist kit lives, because water and unknown services are what turn a clean trench into a problem. We carry the gear that keeps a wet, congested excavation safe and workable.
Our hydro-vac handles non-destructive excavation: potholing to expose live services before anyone swings a bucket, daylighting around gas, power, telco and water mains, and cleaning out chambers and lines without the risk of a strike. On brownfield and energy work, where as-builts are optimistic and the ground is full of other people's assets, the hydro-vac is what lets us dig with confidence instead of crossing fingers.
For groundwater, we run bypass and dewatering pumps. Trunk drainage and deep stormwater frequently sit below the water table, and a trench that's filling is a trench you can't work or lay pipe in. Bypass pumping keeps live flows moving around the work area so the network stays in service while we cut into it; dewatering pumps draw the water level down so the crew can get to grade and bed the pipe properly. Without this kit, half of South Auckland's drainage work would stop at the first wet hole.
Ground support: trench and manhole shields
Deep excavation is the part of this trade that hurts people, and we don't improvise around it. We run trench shields and manhole shields so crews work inside protected ground rather than under an unsupported face. Shields go in as the depth demands, the work happens inside the box, and the wall stays where it belongs. It's slower to set up than just digging a hole, and that's the point: collapse is the risk that ends a job and a life, so we engineer it out rather than gamble on the ground holding.
Traffic management and the H&S system behind the fleet
A lot of civil work happens in the road corridor or right beside live traffic, and a job stops dead without compliant traffic management. We hold our own. That means we set up, run and adjust our site traffic management instead of waiting on a third-party TMC to fit us into their run sheet. When a dig needs the layout changed at short notice, we change it ourselves and keep working.
Behind all of it sits the safety system, because plant is only as good as the framework that runs it. Our people are Site Safe trained, and crews are competency-assessed to the Construction Safety Council Tier 1 framework. We hold confined space, first aid, traffic control and driver endorsements across the team, work to documented safe operating procedures for each machine and task, and run a custom health and safety system built around the way we actually operate.
Owning the fleet is the easy part. The value is that one company resources the dig, the lift, the haul, the dewatering, the shoring and the traffic management from a single yard, under one safety system, on one programme. That's what removes the gaps where jobs slip.
What self-performing actually buys the head contractor
The reason any of this matters to you, rather than to us, is risk and programme. When a civil package is split across an earthworks subbie, a drainage subbie, a cartage account, a dewatering hire and a separate TMC, every handover is a place the programme can fail and every interface is an argument waiting to happen. We collapse that. One contractor, self-performing the civil scope, with the plant standing behind the price.
It shows up in the work. The gear is proven on jobs you can check: public sewer on Penlink for Fulton Hogan; the Tauriko enabling works for Downer; stormwater upgrades at Paerata Station and at the Wiri EMU depot for TRS; energy civils subcontracted to Ventia and delivered across Vector's programme; a Spark data centre upgrade in Takanini; a detention tank for Ryman; and TDM subdivision works at Hobsonville. Different clients, different sectors, same fleet and the same crews.
We work across Pukekohe, Franklin, Papakura, Takanini, Drury, Karaka, Paerata, Pokeno, Manukau, Wiri, Hobsonville, Whangaparaoa, Silverdale, Kumeu and Riverhead, with the standing crew in Queenstown for South Island work. If your job sits inside that footprint and needs civil and drainage done by one resourced team, we can talk through what it takes.
Do you own your plant or hire it in?
We own the fleet and resource it from our own yard. That covers the eleven excavators, the three JCB telehandlers, the trucks and trailers, the 25-tonne articulated transporter, the hydro-vac, the dewatering and bypass pumps, and the trench and manhole shields. Owning the gear means availability is on our programme, not a hire desk's, and the people running each machine are our own competency-assessed operators.
Can you self-perform a full civil and drainage package?
Yes. The fleet is built so one contractor handles earthworks, pipe-laying, dewatering, shoring, materials handling, haulage and traffic management without subletting the core scope. For a head contractor that means fewer interfaces, fewer handovers and a single point of accountability for the civil works, which is usually where programme risk concentrates.
How do you handle digging around live underground services?
Non-destructively. Our hydro-vac potholes and daylights services so we expose gas, power, telco and water assets before any machine works near them, which is essential on brownfield and energy jobs where record drawings can't be fully trusted. It's a core part of how we keep strikes off our sites and meet the standards utility clients expect.
Do you provide your own traffic management?
We do. We run our own site traffic management rather than depending on an external provider's availability, so a job in the road corridor isn't held up waiting for a TMC and layouts can be adjusted on site as the work changes. Our team holds the relevant traffic control endorsements alongside Site Safe training and Construction Safety Council Tier 1 competency assessment.
What size jobs does the fleet suit?
The 5-to-35-tonne excavator spread, combined with the handling and haulage gear, lets us work everything from tight subdivision lots and lateral connections through to deep trunk drainage, large-diameter pipe and bulk earthworks. Because it's one fleet, we can run several work fronts at once on a larger programme, or put a single right-sized machine on a focused job.
If you've got civil or drainage work coming up and want it done by a contractor who owns the plant and crews it properly, tell us about the job. Request a quote or call Darryn Muir on 021 271 0035.
