Fruitful evolution for Shoobridge Transport

By: Greg Bush, Photography by: Greg Bush & Trevor Worden

Date: 22.02.2023

Tucked away in the industrial area of Murwillumbah, Shoobridge Transport has evolved from a humble banana growing operation to a successful interstate transport business over a 40-year period, despite the driver shortage and the occasional Tweed River flood

It appeared to be a fairly relaxed environment when I rolled up for a mid-morning catchup with the team at Shoobridge Transport’s depot in the northern New South Wales town of Murwillumbah.

While there were was the intermittent truck arriving and departing, it would be easy to surmise that one of the Tweed Shire town’s largest family-run road transport operators was going through a quiet phase. That presumption proved to be totally incorrect.

"We’re busy all year round," company co-director Peter ‘Pedro’ Shoobridge points out. "Come back in the afternoon."

However, the supposed ‘quiet time’ gave me the opportunity to sit down with Peter and his compliance manager Ken Harries, for a chat about the origins of Shoobridge Transport and how it has progressed to the strong position it enjoys now.

Later, I took Peter’s advice and returned to the depot a few hours later to be confronted with a hive of activity. Trucks of various makes, including Scanias, Western Stars, Volvos, Kenworths and Freightliner Cascadias were being loaded with various forms of freight, bound for the southern capitals and over the nearby border to Queensland.

"The Cascadia is definitely the cheapest truck to operate at this stage," Peter says. "They’ve been brilliant. We’ve only got two of them and potentially a third one this year."

The Scania tally is up to 11, including a new R 650, Peter stating that they’re winning the fuel battle by a fairly healthy margin. As for the bonneted trucks, Peter has a new Western Star 48X on order.

"We’ve got guys who have to have the big chrome grill and whatever. Then we’ve got the guys who won’t drive anything but a Scania or a Volvo for the comfort and safety levels.

"So I think the beauty of having a mixed fleet is that we do cater for a cross section of drivers, and I think in some ways that helps with retention."

There’s around 50 trucks at Shoobridge and, while the various makes and models may seem an issue for some trucking operators insofar as service and maintenance is concerned, there’s simple logic behind Peter’s multi model fleet choices.

"One of the reasons that we have such a cross section of trucks is because we actually have good relationships with all the local dealers. We like to spread the love," he smiles.

Importantly, Shoobridge Transport has its own in-house workshop, although one of the company mechanics, Mick Hall, later remarked on the mixed fleet that "sometimes it’s a pain in the bum".

"But at other times, for the apprentices here, it’s good that they get a bit of knowledge on everything," Mick adds.

It's also handy that a Gibbs Trailer & Trailer outlet is located on the perimiter of the Shoobridge depot.

In a bid to encourage newcomers to the diesel mechanic trade, Peter says Shoobridge Transport takes on a new apprentice each year. It’s a sign of the times where mechanics are as hard to come by as professional drivers.

"We haven’t been able to employ a qualified mechanic for a good three or four years," Peter says. "We’re bringing through a team of apprentices. We just had one apprentice finish his apprenticeship and gain his trade, which is fantastic for us.

"We’ve had a lot of applications and kids interested but unfortunately, as much as we’d like to put them on, we’ve just got to have the balance right of tradesmen and apprentices. At the moment there’s not enough tradesmen and far too many apprentices so they’re not going to get the supervision they need."

In keeping with Shoobridge’s family environment, one of the apprentice mechanics, Josh King, tells me that his father Shane King works in the operations side of the business.

For the Shoobridge clan itself, there’s Peter’s brother and co-director Barry ‘Basil’ Shoobridge who much prefers life on the road than in the office, while Peter’s wife Kay Shoobridge is admin manager. At the younger end of the scale, Peter’s 21-year-old son Ryley does weekend changeovers to Kempsey.

"Ryley has been exposed to the industry from a very early age; he’s loved trucks since he was a kid," Peter says. "He’s semi-trailer and B-double licensed now so he’s working full on every day in the business."

Last but certainly not least is Peter and Barry’s semi-retired mum Gwenda who remains a director of the business, putting in a few hours each Sunday on paperwork duties.

However, it soon became easy to realise that Ken Harries, despite not bearing the Shoobridge surname, is as vital to the team as any family member.

"Certainly, as an employee it’s certainly a place where you’re made to feel part of the family; part of the bigger Shoobridge family," Ken says. "I certainly appreciate it."

Ken’s role in the business has gained extra importance over the years with compliance becoming a major issue in today’s world of trucking, although Shoobridge Transport has been an earlier adopter of compliance and accreditation, including TruckSafe.

Recent years has seen the introduction of Seeing Machines in all company trucks in a bid to recognise the signs of driver fatigue. Ken admits that educating employee drivers to the system had some acceptance issues.

"I guess there was a bit of negativity at first, but we’ve certainly communicated back to the drivers that the reason we do this is for their protection," Ken says.

"We’re not after a disciplinary tool as such, it’s purely there for their protection and it gives us a bit of confidence as well as peace of mind."

Ken explains that an alarm and seat vibration is activated after a driver closes his eyes for a second and a half.

"There’s also distraction events after four seconds. Events are verified by a Guardian call centre. They will adjudicate it as either a reportable event or not and, within our system, they send us emails for all events.

"For the serious fatigue or fatigue event, we’ll also get a phone call."

Peter says nowadays it’s a prerequisite for any transport business to be compliant.

"We don’t want to be on the news, we don’t want to be going to funerals, we don’t want to be in the courts every second day," he stresses.

"I think everyone can go on about the authorities and policing, but we really have no complaints in that area because we understand it’s a fact of life that we have to stay safe and compliant.

"So, from our point of view, compliance is a natural part of doing business."

Peter adds that one area of transport that needs to improve, as far as fatigue is concerned, are the lengthy delays at distribution centres. "They’ve got better but they’re still a factor in fatigue related issues for the industry."

Ken believes the negativity from mainstream media is impacting on the attractiveness of the trucking industry as a career choice. As per most transport businesses, Shoobridge struggles to attract new blood to an ageing workforce.

"The industry has got to do more," Ken says. "You ask Joe Average out there about the trucking industry or transport industry, they’ll only tell you bad stories and largely these come from what’s put in the media.

"I don’t think we have enough good stories of the good work that we do – you’ll only hear about major incidents. When we as an industry are involved in an incident, the media always refers to it as a heavy vehicle crash and that the driver has been taken away for drug and alcohol testing.

"I’m not sure what the current statistics are but I know a number of years ago it was 93 per cent of fatalities involving heavy vehicles were caused by light vehicles. I’m sure 90 per cent of the population will be astounded by that figure."

Ken says he believes the general public would also be surprised by the amount of compliance work undertaken at Shoobridge Transport. "Many only perceive red neck truckers on the road whereas truck drivers these days are far more professional."

He points out that there is a myriad of jobs available in road transport, apart from getting behind the wheel.

"We’ve got over 100 staff here, only 60-odd of them are truck drivers. You could be a mechanic, in admin, operations, and you could be in the warehouse."

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Nevertheless, the staff levels are a far cry from Shoobridge Transport’s origins. Back in 1973, Glen Shoobridge and Des Stafford, Peter’s father and uncle, were banana growers in the Tweed Shire and surrounds. They bought their first truck to carry their own produce to market. That led to the brothers receiving requests from other farmers in the area to haul their goods. Hence, more trucks soon followed.

Describing Des as a "bloody hard worker", Peter and Barry bought their uncle’s side of the business in 1994. Sadly, their dad Glen Shoobridge passed away eight years ago.

"I think we can say we were born into it," Peter says. "I don’t know that we had too much desire to do anything else at the time.

"We’re from the land originally and basically born into the transport business or maybe we had a dose of diesel in the blood and from an early age. I know we used to get off the school bus and go and load banana boxes by hand."

Peter says he and Barry used to joke that their father wouldn’t do any work until 3.30 in the afternoon, just when the school bus turned up.

It was unfortunate in some respects that the northern NSW banana industry began to decline, mainly due to the growth of Queensland’s plantations. From hauling hundreds of pallets of bananas each week, that side of Shoobridge’s business is now down to less than 10 pallets.

"The banana industry was initially where we kicked off, it was very strong in the region. But over time it’s basically dissolved into next to nothing," Peter says.

Countering that, Shoobridge Transport evolved from concentrating on local business into line-haul operations and a diversified customer base. Nowadays, many Shoobridge Transport’s customers come from the food and beverage sector, including craft beer which is a big percentage of its operations.

"For a lot of our business we’re doing the finished product now," Peter explains. "Before that we were doing a lot of the inbound ingredients and packaging for the same manufacturers.

"So if you look at it, we’ve got a bit of a loop going on. We do inbound into the end of their manufacturing, but then carry out the finished product as well.

"So if anything, we’ve managed to put together a good all round service for a lot of these customers. We’re doing the inbound that they need and then we’re doing the outbound when it’s all made."

As suggested, customer service, as well as their fleet’s tidy appearance, is one of the reasons behind Shoobridge Transport’s success, despite being subjected to flood events in the past five years due to its proximity to the Tweed River.

"We’re certainly getting better at that flood response through the experience we now have and planning," Ken Harries says.

It’s that focus on service that has maintained the relationship between the business and its regular customers who were sympathetic during the crises.

"Service is the only way you’re going to be successful in this industry because we’ve all got the same equipment, we all travel on the same roads and we’re all regulated by the same regulations," Ken explains.

"The only thing that really can be different is your service offer."

Peter goes further when he states that Shoobridge Transport is now in the best shape it’s ever been.

"A lot of people go, ‘you’ve bloody done well’, and I say, ‘it’s only perseverance that’s kept us here’," he says.

"So at the end of the day, it’s just hard work and dedication and commitment from many good people over many years."

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