Brennan’s Earthmoving has been operating from the Snowy Mountains town of Tumbarumba for over 40 years.
Established by Danny Brennan, the business was acquired by Goulburn’s Divall Group in July 2023 and has since seen significant investment in facilities and equipment including a new concrete batching plant.
The nature of the local environment and the climate presents some unique challenges, something which Brennan’s manager Pat Wilesmith is very aware of after spending a decade with the operation.
“Winter is quieter here because it snows and rains,” says Pat. “Rain is the biggest challenge, not snow. We check the weather forecasts and move equipment and people to where they can work. In winter we might struggle for three months from June to August and we aim to have major jobs complete by Easter.”
Many of those jobs involve making and maintaining all-weather roads through the forests which cover much of the surrounding area.
Brennan’s also undertakes a lot of local government work such as drainage.
Other projects Brennan’s has worked on include the Tumbarumba Rail Trail which repurposed the bed of a disused railway track to suit cyclists and walkers as a method to attract tourists during the warmer months.
Brennan’s was working on that very project when devastating bush fires broke out in 2020.
Homes, infrastructure and forest assets were destroyed but the outcome could have been much worse without the speedy response from local earthmovers including Brennan’s which deployed their plant and machinery such as bulldozers to clear firebreaks in an effort to stop the flames and minimise damage.
The recent expansion of the Brennan’s operations has been good for the town as the staff numbers have grown from 15 to currently 32 locals employed, plus some contractors.
As the business has grown, office manager Sarah Kirton and her team have been instrumental in having the office area triple in size and it now includes modern staff facilities.
Outside are large areas of concrete hardstand. The fleet has grown in numbers and modernisation, with a number of former Divall’s units including three 8-wheeler Kenworth agitators and three Kenworth T409 tipper-dog combinations replacing some vehicles such as older T600s.
By running under PBS the trailers are capable of 38 tonnes instead of the standard 32 tonnes.
“The four-axle dog set up suits us particularly when tipping road base on forestry roads,” says Pat.
“The quad dog is about the limit to be able to tip gravel uphill and downhill.”
The trucks require bullbars, not just for errant livestock and native wildlife, but also because of the wild brumbies and feral deer which can be encountered on roads in the Snowy Mountains.
On forest blocks which have never been logged the Brennan’s team will initially push a road through with Caterpillar D8 bulldozers, then install drainage pits with an excavator, and then finally spread the trucked-in gravel with a grader.
Most of the original forest roads were constructed to suit single semi-trailers, but with B-doubles now becoming the industry standard, constructing loading bays nine metres wide and big turnaround areas is required.
Much of the rock comes from a quarry near the hamlet of Tooma, locally renowned for its charming pub and community-minded cricket team, and is located deeper into the Snowy about 35 kilometres south of Tumbarumba.
A new and larger replacement crushing plant is being installed to increase capacity as demand for the products ramps up. Around 10,000 tonnes of road base have been delivered to Cabramurra which is the highest town in Australia.
A member of TruckSafe, Brennan’s has its own well-equipped workshop and the team of four mechanics maintain and service the trucks and equipment.
A brake tester is being installed because service and engine brakes are even more important than usual in light of the many long and steep grades found on the mountain roads.
Cooling system capabilities are important as well due to the extended periods a truck is required to ‘lug’ while negotiating the many long uphill grades in the region.
The tippers are serviced every fortnight, which is around 5,000 kilometres, with the agitators serviced on the alternate week.
Trucks being driven by drivers who have recently joined the team have their brakes checked every week, and an experienced driver accompanies new drivers to check their brake use and their general driving abilities.
Following a conversation, which Andy Divall and Pat Wilesmith had with IVECO executives at the Brisbane Truck Show, it was decided to acquire some all-wheel drive agitator trucks and since their arrival the IVECO T-Way’s have impressed with their performance and their driver comfort.
“They’re a really good thing,” says Pat. “They deliver the confidence they’ll climb anywhere, and we’ve trained drivers so we can move them between depots.”
The two IVECO 6×6 T-Ways are equipped with four cubic metre Davcron agitator barrels and are shared between the Tumbarumba operation and the Concrete-4-Goulburn business which is also a part of the Divall’s group.
Featuring 450hp 13.0-litre Cursor engines, the T-Ways are proving to be successful in fulfilling the specialised requirements associated with constructing the tower bases for the high voltage electrical transmission lines being constructed between the Snowy 2.0 project and connecting to the main grid near Goulburn.
There can be up to 40 cubic metres of concrete in one pier hole and delivering to some of the more remote locations is further challenged by the steep, and often slippery, terrain.
In some instances the concrete is delivered as close to a job site as possible using an 8-wheeler agitator, and the mix is then transferred to one of the IVECO T-Ways which, with its all-wheel drive capabilities, is able to deliver the concrete mix to the final destination.
Distances for deliveries and ambient temperatures dictate that special mixes are required for some batches of concrete.
“Going to Khancoban or Tom Groggin near Thredbo, you put it to ‘sleep’ and suspend the mix’s chemical reaction which keeps it at the same ‘slump’, then we just put in another additive to wake it up,” says Pat.
Extensive trials have been carried out keeping concrete in an agitator for up to three hours to replicate the delivery times to the remotest locations, with the mix being tested every hour by taking a barrowful out and testing how ‘wet’ it is.
While it is still early days in the power line project, the IVECO T-Ways have already proved their capabilities.
“We did a wind farm job and they couldn’t get in with 6x4s, but we got the 6wd trucks in like a breeze,” says Pat.
For this particular job Brennan’s involvement was purely to provide the transport function and a separate party provided the concrete.
“There was not any other option,” says Pat. “We saved them a lot of worry about how they were going to do it. The IVECO T-Ways will be based in Lobs Hole for much of this summer performing the delivery of concrete for the transmission tower pads, taking the concrete from the Snowy 2.0 tunnel’s batch plant.“
There are many synergies already being realised by Brennan’s becoming a part of the overall Divall’s operation, not least of all by delivering excellent results for people and equipment operating in very challenging situations.
