Ken Keating has been around the trucking industry for quite a while – 88 years in fact.
A part of the Shepparton landscape, the business actually began in Bendigo where younger brother, Brian’s family still conduct business under the Keating name.
Bendigo, 1924, and Bill Keating left Buckle & Jeffrey, where he worked in the furniture removal division, and struck out on his own. A 1.5 tonne Chevrolet van replaced the horse and cart in 1927 and Keatings Transport was born.
Oldest son, Ray joined Bill in the business, while young Ken headed off to Marist Brothers at Macedon where he excelled in Aussie Rules Football, although not so much academically by his own admission.
Returning to Bendigo for medical reasons, Ken got a job with John Brown Industries, making socks and, after recovering, continued to play footy for YCW Association Football and Sandhurst in the Bendigo Football League. Socks, however, were not going to make him his fortune, so Ken joined Ray in working for their father, Bill.
In the late 1940s and without a licence, Ken would accompany Ray on trips to Melbourne and share the driving.
With Ken behind the wheel one time, the Transport Regulation Board (TRB) waves them down. Ken shakes a dozing Ray, moves forward in the seat while Ray slides in behind him and takes over. The TRB don’t believe it for a second but let the boys off.
After getting hauled up three times on the one day, the police haul Ken into the police station and issue him a licence because, “It’s obvious you’re not going to do what you’re told!”
In those days, any crated goods (furniture, whitegoods, etc.) had to be transported by rail and a permit was required to cart any freight that the rail could not handle.
Of course, most stuff was crated so Ken got creative, delivering new furniture to the Bendigo shops at 6am to beat the TRB Inspectors trying to catch offenders such as him.
Of course he was always going to be caught. His argument that the furniture was second-hand didn’t hold much sway, so a battle then ensued with young Ken starting at 5am, and then 4am to evade one particular inspector hell-bent on ‘throwing the book’ at him.
Having been caught with a new combustion stove that he’d loaded opposite the Transport Regulation Board (TRB) office in Bendigo, the officer threatened Ken with a hefty fine.
“You’d be the biggest pommy bastard in Bendigo if you booked me,” exclaimed Ken.
Getting dragged to the TRB office, Ken stuck to his story that the stove was second-hand and, to his relief got off with a warning after being made to apologise profusely to his antagonist.
The next time he was pulled up, Ken – whose family were known for being good Catholics – declared that his load was “for the nuns and I’m not being paid,” which apparently got him off a fine. Thereafter he did a lot of ‘deliveries’ to the nuns.
Also being a good Catholic lad, Ken would pick up the old nuns and take them to Sacred Heart Cathedral at Bendigo in the back of the furniture van with benches installed down each side, ‘Installed’ meaning shoved in.
We’re guessing the Almighty forgave Ken’s fibs to the TRB in return for his good deeds for the nuns.
Working under the philosophy of ‘anything that will pay a quid’, one of Ken’s regular jobs was to transport coffins. Luckily, they were empty coffins, so Ken filled them and the wardrobes he transported with tins of biscuits: “Seemed like a waste of a lot of empty space, and there was no income from empty space.”
It also hid those ‘mandated by rail’ biscuits from the authorities. Anything that could be stored inside wardrobes and coffins was. Again, making use of ‘space’, Ken would stack wardrobes on top of each other.
We presume he was good at lashing his cargo down. He added a baby Quinn trailer to increase his capacity and when people moved home, the cargo could be as diverse as cows and chickens.
At one time he worked for Millikin’s in Bendigo who were egg collectors for the Egg Board, carting them to Melbourne. Returning from Melbourne one day, Ken found no-one in the yard. He hunted them down at the Egg Board Office to find that they were on strike.
Asking why, they replied: “Because you are working as hard as us and doing the same work so why should you get paid less because of your age?” That was a win for young Ken.
He went on to work for Ray who had bought his own truck and had struck out on his own. When dad, Bill called it a day, Ken bought his furniture truck. The business had moved on from removals and the brothers were carting chickens from Bendigo to Melbourne.
Ken tells the story of stopping at traffic lights on Flemington Rd next to a tram. The tram moves off and Ken is surprised to see several chickens sitting on its roof.
“A couple of the cage latches had vibrated loose on the trip down. I guess they made a nice dinner for someone.”
“The credit squeeze was on,” reminisces Ken. “To make money, Ray and I were sweeping up chook manure, putting it into bags, loading them onto a semi and selling it in Melbourne. We had to do something in those days because things were pretty bad.”
In addition, he took on work wherever it became available.
“I took on livestock, driving for three companies at the same time. I’d take an empty Rutherford’s Livestock truck [International R160s or 180s] up into the middle of New South Wales and load livestock to bring back and drop it in or outside Bendigo, or up near Inglewood. This was sheep, I didn’t like the cows.
“I’d arrive home, drop the truck and hop over the fence, climb into another Inter for O’Connell’s Transport and do the same thing. Then it was ‘over the fence’ again and run a load of tomatoes to Melbourne for John Goodbody.
In 1958 Ken married Dorothy Joyce Brereton and in 1960 bought a WC White and a Fingale two-deck stock trailer, travelling throughout Victoria and outback NSW.
With son, Stephen coming along in 1960, Ken wanted a rest from the road – or at least from being away for days on end – and took up a seasonal job offer from Streets Ice Cream, driving a petrol-powered Commer with a bogey fridge van.
“The walls were some 5” thick and there was an electric motor at the front of the van, to be plugged in overnight to freeze the brine tanks placed down the centre.
“It was all hand loading and unloading and it would take me four hours to drive from Melbourne to Bendigo. You can imagine how long it took to drive to Sydney!”
A season at Streets and Ken was back on the livestock, this time with Bill Fitzpatrick at Charlton.
The following ice-cream season, Streets again offered him a job as assistant manager which he refused, until two weeks later when driving to Charlton from Melbourne he instead ended up in Sunbury with no memory of having driven there. Luckily the Streets’ offer was still on the table.
“Eastoe’s would come in with the ice-cream and I’d have to be there at 4am to unload. It’s what you did back then. My manager became ill, and they offered me his position. ‘Hang on’, I said. ‘I’m just a truck driver’. I didn’t know what paperwork was. I’d only got to Grade 8 and I’d repeated that three times! I could barely add or subtract. Stocktake and sales were foreign to me …. so of course I took the job!
“I remember sitting there day after day, pouring over the old paperwork, trying to work it out – how to reconcile the books then deliver the cash to the bank in a little bag before heading home. I sorted it out in the long run and learnt because I had to.
“After some three months the manager came good, which suited me. Streets had built a new cold store in Geelong, and they asked if I’d be interested in working there. I said to my beautiful Dorothy that I hoped I wouldn’t get it because the wind blew like hell down there.
“In the end they went with someone else, but I thanked them for considering me. A month later they suggested Ballarat, which was cold, so cold! Missed out on that too, thankfully. Then, in 1964 I get a call to tell me I’m going to Shepparton [too hot?] where the manager had retired.
“I lasted with Streets for a year before going to work for Bill Zurcas. Bill had orchards, hotels and motels, you name it.
“He used to yell at me all the time, that’s just the way he spoke. They had a stranglehold on business in Shepparton and still do to an extent. Like many others, they had to get the fruit to market and it was too expensive to use a contractor, so they had some 10 trucks of their own, spread over their multiple orchards.
“I collected all the trucks, painted them green with a white roof and registered the company as Zurcas Trucking Company. The Streets experience had stood me in good stead.
“We started doing export fruit. All the fruit was in cases, so we’d go around to the different cold stores, load them up for Melbourne and take them down to the wharf. At least by now I didn’t have to load them myself.
“I was with Zurcas for 2.5 years, and after a short stint with Nabisco, fell in with Geoffrey Thompson Fruit Packing in 1969. They were the biggest in the southern hemisphere at the time. I bought a Mercedes-Benz 1413 from them and started running the fruit to the wharves.
Twelve months on and I needed a bigger truck, asking them if they’d help me to buy a 1418 bogey bogey.
“Old Geoffrey came to the party and we formed a 50/50 partnership with four 1418s, growing to a fleet of ten and running to the Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide markets as well as the wharves.
“The time came when Geoff wanted to consolidate his myriad of subsidiary companies into the mother company, Geoffrey Thompson Holdings, and this included of course the depots and trucks.”
Instead of money changing hands, Ken became the third largest shareholder in Thompson Holdings. He continued to run the freight operations for Thompsons for the next five years, growing the fleet to 45 trucks.
In February of 1982, he bought Thompson’s intra-state operations, along with one Scania 141, a MAN twin steer single drive, a Toyota Dyna tray truck and a subby, Jim Spence, and with Dorothy, formed Ken Keating Freight Lines P/L. Ken’s love affair with the Scania product had started 10 years before with Thompsons and he saw no reason to change. Third son, Mark was first to join the family business which concentrated on intrastate using single trailers.
Around this time with the company rebranded Keating Freight Lines to reflect his children’s involvement, the business also created Keating Van Lines (harking back to the furniture removals), and another half a dozen divisions, in the name of reducing payroll tax. For a bloke that only made it to Grade 8, Ken is doing well.
“It’s amazing how smart you get when it comes to minimising tax,” Ken quipped.
In succeeding years, the Keatings bought out Midway of Benalla’s intrastate work, Tom Murray Van Lines of Shepparton who did removals. Stan Bicknells Freight, Heart of Victoria Removals, Sitelink Transport of Mooroopna and another local, Barry Adams Freight. The diversification continued. The Keatings moved from one shed in Mitchell Street to a depot in Benalla Road which abutted a Motel.
The family bought it with a view to future expansion of the depot and Dorothy ran it for three years. There was also the purchase of a Funeral Parlour at nearby Numurkah – as you do. Was this an ode back to those days of coffins loaded with biscuits?
“No, it was to help someone out,” said Ken. “We didn’t run that business ourselves.”
The company has flirted with other products. “Someone wanted to drive a Kenworth K100,” said Ken, pointing to Mark – but has largely remained with Scania since those days in 1972 when Ken bought three LB80s and an LB110 – Scania’s first trucks in the country.
There was, however, a fracturing of the relationship at one point in time. Ken would always pay cash on the 30th day after a new truck was delivered, but this didn’t suit the (Australian) manager of Scania at the time and a barney ensued.
“I thought it was good arrangement for both sides, but they told me the ‘honeymoon’ was over. ‘Is that right,’ I said. Well, I’ve got news for you too.
“Vic Serafini was the International salesman at John Taig – a well know Shepparton dealer. John had said to Vic, “Don’t bother going to Keatings, they are Scania though and through.” Imagine John’s surprise and Vic’s delight when we ended up with about 12 S-lines and a Transtar! We’ve also had UD, Isuzu, MAN, Iveco, ACCO, those old Benz’s and the Inter R models over the years.
“After the S-lines, Scania asked how they could get us back into the fold. They had a new head honcho from Sweden and we were invited to their manufacturing facility in Glenbarry Rd, Campbellfield, where there was a big welcome sign put up for us. Then on to the head office and yet another welcome sign. ‘What can we do to get your business back?’ said the new boss.
“Firstly, the best thing you could do is put a service man or shop up in Shepparton, I said, and it happened sometime later. There were a few other things to which they agreed and then they took us to lunch in their boardroom, with a chef and everything. It was superb! I ordered four 113s that day.”
“We’ve always returned to Scania and are up to about our 70th, with 24 in the fleet at the moment.”
At 88, Ken Keating has slowed down a bit, leaving the running of the business to Mark and oldest brother, Stephen. Second brother, Christopher was managing director of the company before his premature passing. Stephen’s sons, Ash and Ross are also continuing the family legacy.
“They won’t let me behind the wheel,” complains Ken. “Although I do hop in the R200 every now and then.” (A beautifully restored example bearing Ken and Dorothy’s names and a surprise gift from the family, for his 80th birthday).
One hundred years on and the Keating name – in the same lettering as that first removal van – is regularly seen on the roads around Shepparton, as is the brand in Bendigo and Swan Hill where Ken’s brothers’ families reside.
Congratulations on 100 years of Keating Freight Lines, Ken.