We are witnessing something deeply saddening and profoundly unsettling: an industry built on hard work, sacrifice, and generations of dedication slowly collapsing under pressures that no honest family business should ever have to endure.
Every week – sometimes every single day – another trucking company announces administration or liquidation. Businesses that have carried this country for decades are closing their doors. Companies built by families who poured their lives into them… suddenly gone. And it isn’t because these people lost their drive or their commitment. It’s because the pressures bearing down on them have become simply impossible to survive.
Constant government demands, crippling taxes, regulations that shift faster than small operators can adapt. Other companies slashing rates so low that no one can make a living, dragging the whole industry down with them. A nationwide labour and skill shortage that leaves trucks parked and workloads piling up, while operators desperately search for people who just aren’t there.
For so many, coming to work every day has become an exhausting uphill climb. The spark that once kept these family businesses going is being smothered by obstacles they had no hand in creating.
And let’s be clear: these are not just companies. These are family legacies. They are built on early mornings, late nights, missed holidays, and sacrifices that most people will never fully understand. For 50 years, 60 years or more, these operators have stepped up for Australia – through fires, floods, pandemics, and every challenge thrown their way.
But now? They’re weary. They’re drained. And for the first time, many are saying: “We can’t keep going like this.”
So I ask the question that echoes across this entire nation: When will the government finally recognise what these family trucking companies do for Australia?
When will they acknowledge the essential role we play, the pressures we’re under, and the simple truth that without us, this country cannot function?
It is heartbreaking to watch long-standing companies – businesses that have survived economic downturns, industry changes, and decades of challenges – shut their doors not because they want to, but because they feel they have no alternative left.
Every closure isn’t just a business lost. It is knowledge lost. Jobs lost. Community lost. It is another piece of our industry disappearing right before our eyes.
We deserve better. Our families deserve better. Our industry deserves better.
It is time – long overdue – for our leaders to step up, listen, and act before the very foundation of Australian transport is eroded beyond repair.
Because once these 50-year family companies are gone, they are gone forever.
And Australia will feel the loss in ways that cannot be fixed.
- True Ross-Sawrey is a small trucking business operator and manager at third-generation Port Kembla business, Ross Transport.
WHERE EVER POSSIBLE THE TRUCKING AND SMALL BUSINESS MUST DENOUNCE THIS GOVERNMENT FOR THEIR SUPPORT OF THE WEF, WHO, UN AND THE ELITE WHO ARE ATTEMPTING TO DESTROY SMALL BUSINESS/TRUCKING INDUSTRY TO HAND THE BUSINESS TO THE MULTINATIONALS. IT’S HAPPENING RIGHT ACROSS THE WESTERN WORLD.
IF WE CANNOT STOP THESE POLICIES AUSTRALIA WILL BECOME A BACKWATER, INSTEAD WITH WHAT WE HAVE WE SHOULD BE THE SWITZERLAND OF SOUTH EAST ASIA.
“Skills shortage”? Maybe a wage shortage is more appropriate.
You have about one third of your workforce who weren’t even in Australia10 years ago. There is a wage shortage.
Indeed, the current situation for small fleet, or single rig, owners is atrocious. I’m retired now; but, I’ve been both a driver and an owner-driver. If I were a present day 18-year-old, knowing what I know now, there’s no way that I would get involved in the trucking industry. I love driving heavy vehicles; and, I was driving from the age of 16 (first trip Adelaide-Melbourne, in a semi, at 16). But now, it’s better being a ‘tradie’. At least the pay is good; plenty of work; no NHVR or police ‘breathing-down-your-neck’; and, you get at least eight hours of sleep in your own bed at night.
This is a sad time in our industry so many great mid sized companies hitting the wall.Thing is l look back 40 years to when l started as a driver Brambles Mayne Nicholas and TNT were everywhere now all gone.But others took their place and yes some of them have also fallen by the wayside.The transport industry will always survive and adapt b-doubles triples etc Thing is we need leadership not sheep steering the rigs of Australia.Blaming each other is not the answer we need to stand together as drivers owners and anyone else in our industry and say enough your rules are killing drivers and putting business’s to the wall.We have the power if we unite but it takes all of us not just a few.