Robbie Allen came from the humblest of troubled backgrounds. He now owns a fleet of trucks — and another of incredible cars. He told journalist David Fisher success arrived after he found sobriety.
Robbie Allen’s isn’t just a rags-to-riches story — it is one of redemption from a past that dragged him down and promised to keep a boot on his neck until he died.
About the age of 30, he was an alcoholic and a bankrupt with 51 convictions for theft and violence. His broad range of tattoos included a helmet-wearing skull on his cheek.
It was, as he sees it, the inevitable product of an unhappy upbringing starved of love and filled with uncertainty and violence during which time in boys’ homes carved an inevitable path to prison.
Today, the cheek tattoo is gone. He hasn’t had a drink for decades and hasn’t been convicted of a crime for almost 40 years.
And he’s done quite well for himself.
“I just worked and things evolved,” he says of the fleet of trucks and vans he owns, the truck washing business and the classic American cars he collects and sells.
On any given day, Allen’s wealth is hidden in plain sight. He wears about half a million dollars in jewellery including a $300,000 Rolex watch the vendor expected he would keep in its box. In a recent TikTok video, he revealed the woes of wealth when explaining how hot weather softened the gold, leading to diamonds falling out.
Allen grew up in Hamilton as one of 11 children in the city’s poorest suburb.
His mum was Māori and his dad a Scottish-Irish immigrant who, Allen says, carried a grudge at being estranged from his family for marrying a Māori woman. This, and his dad’s lifelong struggle with painkillers, was a major factor in their dysfunctional household.
“I always thought Pākehā were too clever because of my dad and Māoris were slaves and dumb. We used to have fights, us 11 kids, trying to stop Dad from beating up Mum. That was the biggest hang-up — my hate on him.”
One fight too many led to Allen pushing his father through a window, after which he was sent away to live with an uncle in the Kaimai Ranges who had never learned English and communicated his displeasure with a stick.
Running away
For Allen, the only option was to run away. When caught, aged 13, he cycled through boys’ homes and foster care. He has a recollection of attending intermediate school for a handful of months but, like anything else structured in his life at the time, he didn’t take to it.
There was time at the Hamilton Boys’ Home, commonly known as Melville Boys’ Home, and then Waikeria Youth Centre. Both have featured in evidence before the ongoing Royal Commission into Abuse in Care that cites the abuse that took place.
“[At Waikeria] they tell you that you’re the scum of the earth. I already had my hate. This just turned it into rage.”
Allen ran away again and again. He started work as a rousie for a shearing gang. He got into fights. He went to prison. “That was for a hit-and-run.” He got out.
He had his first drink when he was 11, and well into his teens he was drinking and life was spiralling. “I just started stealing things.”
He had relationships and children — he now has seven — and “swore I would never be like my dad”. “But I was worse. I didn’t have love until I was sober. I thought sex was love. When I became sober, the whole thing changed — my whole life.”
And throughout, there was violence. He was called “Rotty” for the Rottweiler dog and the sudden brutality he could bring to any encounter.
“When you’re like that, and have a reputation like that, you feel good.” It was Once Were Warriors and Jake the Muss.
About the age of 30, Allen said he was doing “smash’n’grabs” and was arrested. Defending himself in court, he was asked if he “had a drinking problem”. He said he did and was ordered to attend the Queen Mary Hospital alcohol treatment centre at Hanmer Springs in the South Island.
It wasn’t his only visit. As Allen recalled his first drying out, his “blood boiled” when asked why he was there. There was rage, later, when asked to share during a group session. And conflict when he veered away from anything that was put forward as help.
It was later, as part of a Māori group, that change arrived.
“This guy came in and changed my life. For the first time in my life I had a thought about someone else and not me.
“And then I realised I had my head so far up my f***ing arse. He had had a sad life, like me. For some reason, the penny dropped.”
Allen tucked in behind the programme and got clean. He left Hanmer Springs and went to Christchurch police to clear the slate, admitting a string of crimes. “I confessed to the police and they chalked it off.”
And now clean and clear, he picked up work through his sponsor who was a drainlayer. When he did his first job solo, he realised there was a world of difference between contracting to do a job and simply being paid for his labour.
“I’d never, ever dreamed drainlaying was worth that much money.”
Rocky road to redemption
Hard work and determination had Allen qualified — he still struggles to read — and he set about building Allen Drainlaying.
“I stayed sober for a year and then I slipped.” He succumbed to the urge to visit a pub, but when he took his regular seat he drank only water. “When you’re an alcoholic and accept you’re an alcoholic, drinking is never the same.”
Instead of going out, Allen’s fall back into the bottle happened at home. It came at a time when a drainlaying partnership collapsed after misplaced faith turned to recriminations. At the same time, his latest relationship was heading for disaster.
“That was the first time in my life I thought about committing suicide. The reason I wanted to kill myself was because I didn’t want to be a prick again.”
And so, back to Hanmer Springs, which brought fresh opportunities for trauma to be exposed. In one episode, Allen recalls an incident that triggered a flashback to childhood sexual abuse and brought such rage that he repeatedly punched a wall so hard he broke both his wrists.
He was 31 and looking for a way to be free of the past. His parents travelled to Hanmer Springs for the final step of the programme. It led to an understanding of their roots and the racial dysfunction that coloured their marriage — and his father’s own addiction to painkillers for chronic pain.
“I just forgave them.” At the urging of staff, he wrote a list of the demons he carried and burned it, casting the ashes to the wind. “I felt fabulous. I’d never, ever felt that way before.”
And that was when life really started.
‘I’m 100% straight’
“I’m 100 per cent straight. I’ve no skeletons in my closet,” says Allen. “I never took drugs. That’s what the cops think I am to this day — that I’m high up in the gangs and that all my businesses are money-laundering.”
It had led to police visiting previous homes — “I showed them the computer, my accounts”, telling police “that’s how I’m living here and how I can afford these cars”.
Allen said he had often been pulled up and questioned when out in his Rolls Royce. On a recent occasion, he asked why and was told: “You don’t fit the criteria of this car.”
A spokesman for police said officers “routinely stop vehicles of interest as part of general policing practice and our road safety initiatives”.
“Generally, once an officer establishes a driver’s identity and that there is no wrongdoing, the motorist is able to leave without issue.”
This is how he grew a fortune.
It began with a man called Bruce he met at Alcoholics Anonymous. Bruce was working night shifts in a freight-sorting company and Allen tagged along, shadowing his friend for months while learning the intricate business of logistics.
And it was complicated. It was a major freight-shifting business that would through trucks and cars feed parcels large and small out across the country.
When Bruce left and the job was open, he applied: “I’m 31. I’m an alcoholic and I’ve got 51 convictions for fighting and stealing,” he said during the interview.
The response, he said, was this: “Are we on Candid Camera here? There’s no way you’re getting a job.”
That was when Allen showed off what he had learned — the entire freight system with all its intricacies was second nature. “It was all up here,” he said, pointing to his head.
It led to a month-long trial and then about 35 years of night shifts.
Allen was back doing drains during the day and now freight logistics at night. When one of the delivery vans broke down, he bought a replacement with a loan from a fellow AA member. “I asked why. He said, ‘everyone needs a hand’.”
“Before you know it, it’s 3 o’clock in the morning and a call comes in been ‘Rob, can you get a truck’?”
Building a trucking empire
The opportunity then emerged to bid for the fleet contract to supply vehicles for freight shipping. “I thought I would never get it. I was the only Māori and I only had one truck.”
He left the meeting with an assurance he had the contract if he could provide the vehicles. The BNZ backed his business plan — he’s still with the bank decades later.
That’s how Robbie Allen Transport was born. Today, he owns (through his company) 17 trucks and three truck-trailers along with five vans. All up, he employed about 30 people. The distinctive trucks stand out with number plates reading “RAT” (the initials of Robbie Allen Transport) followed by the number the vehicle has in the fleet.
He stayed with the night shifts from 6pm to 3am at the NZ Couriers base in Hamilton. On the way to work, he would see people heading for pubs and know he was on a better path.
With work came wealth. And, as Allen confirmed, money makes money. He turned his love for classic cars into a car importing business called Extreme Cars.
And there’s his own fleet of nine show cars. There’s the huge Humvee, the bespoke Motorhead-styled Corvette with its $175,000 engine, the Rolls Royce Ghost.
“My accountant said, ‘how many cars can you drive’? I’m living my life how I want. I don’t feel any different.”
Allen laughs about not wearing suits. His standard wear — and old photographs support this — is short shorts and a singlet. And a lot of heavy jewellery.
As Allen’s business and his wealth have grown, he has found ways to share the good fortune. Staff receive Christmas bonuses — particularly vouchers for food to make a targeted reward that will make it home where, perhaps, cash might not.
He has also become an advocate for the Landmark [personal development] programme, paying for staff, friends and even workers at his favourite cafe to take courses.
And there’s time for love. About six years ago he met again a woman he had known from younger days, Wendy Dorothy, and they now share his Hamilton home.
“Not once did I ever think I would be an entrepreneur. All I knew how to do was work. I don’t believe it sometimes.”
David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.