Che Bartle has been in towing and recovery for longer than he has held a driver licence. That is how the trucking magazine NZ Trucking opened a long profile of the ACE Heavy Haulage owner, published online in May 2026, and the rest of the piece bears it out. Bartle grew up in Rotorua, where his stepfather Mike Archer bought the local towing firm, Rotorua Towing, and from the age of 10 he was riding his bike to the yard after school to sweep the floors and wash the trucks.
“I wasn’t a school sort of person; I was a hands-on sort of person. Every chance I could I’d go out in the big tow truck. I think I found a hobby that was going to become a job to me, that I really enjoyed doing,” he told the magazine. He left school at 15 and spent a couple of years pruning trees and labouring in the forests around the Central Plateau, waiting to be old enough to drive the heavy trucks. “The day I turned 18 in 1993, I got my truck and trailer licence, and my V-class towing endorsement,” he said. His first job, that same day, was the recovery of a truck and a car from a fatal crash near Putāruru.
Rotorua was never going to be big enough. Bartle had noticed the purple ACE Towing trucks working out of Auckland, and when he saw the company’s eight-wheeler Mack advertised for sale in Deals on Wheels, he persuaded Archer to buy it and offered to move north to run it. He was 21 and in Auckland within a week. Within six weeks the pair had also bought ACE’s Mack Super-Liner and the heavy haulage side of the business, ACE Heavy Haulage was born, and the trucks were repainted in the yellow the company still wears because it shows up better at night. Bartle ran the two trucks on his own for the first year.
“It’s about service. I always remember Mike saying to me, service is key. In the middle of the night, when someone’s broken down or had an accident or just stuck in a paddock, they don’t want to wait for a long time. They just want someone to turn up,” Bartle said.
In the mid-2000s, approaching 30 and with almost a decade running the business behind him, he handed in his notice and went to England to get qualifications that did not exist in New Zealand or Australia. He worked for the Mansfield Group in Stoke-on-Trent, sat his heavy and light vehicle recovery qualifications, and was given the keys to the company’s new 60-tonne Kenworth rotator. The jobs he recalls include a fully loaded LPG tanker that rolled onto an electrical box at a main intersection, recovered only after Civil Defence had evacuated 10,000 residents, and the vehicle clean-up after the Birmingham riots. He is dyslexic, and told the magazine the study took him time, but that once something is in his mind he does not forget it.
He came home with a plan. “When I came back, we knew we had to get more professional. We knew we had to up the stakes. What I’d seen in England was an eye-opener. So I just applied that here and did everything they do there,” he said. When police put a recovery contract out to tender, he applied what he had learned and won it.
The years since have been spent building the company and fighting for the industry. He bought ACE Heavy Haulage from Archer, opened a depot in Hamilton, and now operates across greater Auckland, the Waikato and New Plymouth, with his brother Brooke, who owns Rowe Motors, Rotorua Towing and Taupō Towing, covering the central North Island alongside him. The company joined the recovery effort after Cyclone Gabrielle. Bartle also spent years pushing for a proper permit regime for heavy tow trucks after high productivity motor vehicles arrived on New Zealand roads in 2010. “It has been a real long journey [achieving the heavy tow permits] and I didn’t think I’d actually get there, but I did in the end,” he said.
The fleet now runs to 13 trucks, including two Dutch-built Falkom super-heavy recovery units on Scania chassis, a 2023 R650 XT and a 2025 R770 XT, which NZ Trucking profiled in a companion piece. The next arrivals are the only two rotators in the country, a 60-tonne unit and a 50/40 sliding rotator, which Bartle says “are going to revolutionise the way we undertake roadside recoveries in New Zealand, without requiring major road closures for recovery.” ACE employs 10 specialist heavy drivers, all of them qualified diesel mechanics, runs four mechanics in its own workshop, and is the only towing company in the industry to run a full-time heavy night shift.
Bartle talks about that team the way he talks about the trucks. “We have to look after our guys. This isn’t the easiest job. They’re working rostered weekends, nights, it’s hard on family … They don’t get a gold medal for doing it; it’s serious business and they have to get it right,” he said. He has also taken on the training role he saw in England, buying a demonstrator truck and trailer for the purpose. “I went and bought a demonstrator truck and trailer, and in the yard I’d flip it over with a car underneath it, and I’d get the Fire and Emergency Service to try and get the car out, and also show them how we’ll do it. Understanding each other and how we work, we can speed up the process and save lives.”
For most New Zealanders the tow truck they meet is not a rotator at a crash scene but a flatbed lifting their hatchback out of a supermarket or apartment car park, and that end of the industry runs on different rules. Our guide to getting your car back from a towing company covers what an operator can charge, the drop fee if you catch the truck in time and how to dispute a tow at the Disputes Tribunal, and our guide to wheel clamping explains the $100 cap that applies to clamps but not to tows.
Bartle is in his fifties now and thinking about who comes after him. “I’m trying to help my staff be comfortable and find where they fit in this company. Some of these guys deserve to be a bit more involved in the business than what they are. I was a young kid and I had an ambition and I worked to get where I wanted to. So if I can help some of these people get to where they want to get to, I could hand this business off to someone that deserved it, and when my time is done, I’d be a happy man.” As he put it to the magazine, “Like I say, I’ve given 40 years of dedication to this industry.”
Have you been pulled out of a ditch or a crash by a heavy recovery crew, or worked in the towing trade yourself? Share your story in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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