Taking on Running a Trucking Business -

Mitch Kelly, who now runs John Kelly Transport in Toowoomba, worked for someone else for a little while, before taking on running a trucking business. He also tried university but couldn’t come to terms with the lifestyle and left. He then did an accounting diploma at TAFE. Later, he jumped into a body truck doing runs up to Kingaroy and claims that was the hardest job he ever had. He was 18 at the time and would start at 2am. Some nights he didn’t finish until 8pm and would go home, get up and do the whole thing again.

“Everyone had pressured me into finding something else but it was my passion,” says Mitch. “When I was in school, I could hear a truck go past and could tell you what motor it was just from the sound of it. When I came back into the family business, I got my single licence, just doing local stuff, to Moree, out to Roma delivering chemicals, doing the cotton.

“That was a bit of an apprenticeship for 12 months. Then I got my MC and I was doing a lot of road train work out of Moree and Dirranbandi. Then I started doing Adelaide and Melbourne, and I did 10 years of interstate before I came off the road. I still love jumping in a truck and having a go.”

Mitch bought a lot of Kenworth T610 SAR trucks to do the operation’s Adelaide work and the B-triple work , according to Mitch, “they are smashing it, they’re fantastic.”

“I highly rate them, the drivers like them,” says Mitch. They’re comfy and they’re a bonneted trucks still.

“I’ve got a couple of manuals and we’ve got eight autos now, the ultra shift. I like them because of the fuel savings. We’ve got the Cummins Eaton ADEPT on them and we’re running them as down speeds, so they are 3.07:1 diffs. They are running B-triples at 80 tonnes sitting on 1400rpm, or thereabouts, all the way to Adelaide. It’s fairly flat road and they just plod along. With the Cummins Eaton ADEPT, they neutralise when they’re not using the engine.

Getting Personnel

However, the Kenworth has another value for the business and workforce attraction is one of the reasons behind going with the brand.

“You can get that many blokes interested in them and people bang on about them,” says Mitch. “They look great, but they are great to ride in and they are smooth trucks. I used to think that they’re rough, because that’s what people said, but when I got in one it was so smooth.”

The larger T909 trucks are manuals as is the Legend and a couple of the T610s, the rest are AMTs. This year will see another four trucks arrive as part of the business’ continued expansion.

“COVID changed our plans,” says Mitch. “I was happy at around 16 or 17 trucks and now we’re at 22. I’ve got four more coming. So, we’ll be at 26 in another six months’ time. That’s only because of the demand that we’ve had. I would have loved to have gotten rid of four or five of the older trucks between now and then.

“They’ve all had new motors in them now, new clutches and gearboxes. We do spend a lot of time and money on maintenance. I’ve got a full-time mechanic and we’ve got another mechanic, who’s a contractor, that we bring in, depending on what’s happening, two or three times a week. Outside of that we outsource it to Brown and Hurley, we’ve got a permanent booking every week there, if we need to, we book trucks in with Daimler.

“We’ve got a fairly young crew. We’ve probably got two extremes, but I’d say that we’ve got a group between 23 and 35, and another group of 50 plus drivers, then maybe one or two in the middle. We actually have a fairly young crew. I’ve had a few young blokes that have given me a few grey hairs, and I’ve had plenty of old blokes give me some grey hairs too.”