Moving Mountains

A change in career away from his trade as a panel beater and spray painter saw Graham Elliott buy his first truck in 1962 which was a tipper he drove for various organisations in the Tumut region such as Tumut Council and the Forestry Corporation.

Graham also established a small landscape products supply service for materials such as sand and gravel.

Graham’s business grew quickly after he began doing transport work for local sawmills hauling wood chips with semi-trailers between mill sites located in Tumut.

This area of operation grew to include four trucks working from the mill sites and Graham also ventured into the pine bark business.

Graham purchased the raw bark material, which until then was mostly considered a waste product, from the mills, built a bark grading plant in Tumut, which sorted it into different sizes, before it was delivered to mainly Sydney based customers.

An industrial accident laid Graham up for many months and his son Grant, the “Son” in Elliott and Son Bulk Haulage quickly took over the running of the operation.

“I was just a young truck driver which back then was all I ever wanted to do,” recalls Grant. “I didn’t want to come into the office but didn’t really have a choice.”

With four trucks then on the mill work and another running to Sydney daily, Elliott’s was also supplying a lot of graded pine bark to various Sydney landscaping suppliers who would arrange their own transport to pick up eight to ten loads each day. The Elliott’s entrepreneurial minds sought to expand the business without affecting efficiency.

“I thought there was a better way, so I got the Sydney Yellow Pages and started to ring every single landscape yard in the book,” says Grant.

“Within 12 months we grew to four trucks running daily to Sydney, expanding eventually to 19 trucks and 68 employees with a 24-hour workshop staffed by six diesel mechanics.”

Grant was managing both the burgeoning landscape yard and the growing transport business and by 2017 was stretching himself too much so the decision was made to sell the pine bark business to Martin’s Fertilisers in Yass.

Later that same year devastating bushfires saw all of the sawmills in the region go from 24-hour operation to ten hours on just four day weeks. The forestry industry lost half of its timber resources and for the next 12 months Elliott’s dealt with burnt pine bark as loggers attempted to salvage what they could.

“It changed the landscape up here forever,” says Grant. “It takes 22 years to grow a ‘saw log’ so it’s not going to change up here for another 15 years or so.”

Elliott’s currently has six prime movers with two more on order.

Two Freightliner Cascadia 116 day cab prime movers have joined the predominantly Kenworth fleet at Elliott’s and the move came about mainly due to Grant’s long-term relationship with Dave Warren who became the Dealer Principal of the Daimler Trucks dealership in Wagga Wagga.

The Fuso Canter tipper which delivers material from the landscape products yard also came via Dave Warren.

“Dave’s been a friend for years and he was our Kenworth salesman, and I’ve bought many trucks from him over the years,” says Grant.

“I normally keep trucks for five years and I’d never really looked at Freightliner, but back then there was a long wait for Kenworths, so I ordered the two Freightliners.”

The Cascadia’s are performing mostly local work, hauling wood chip ten to 12 hours per day from Tumut sawmills to the VISY plant, then the afternoon shift hauling ungraded pine bark to Yass, then going to Canberra to pick up loads of woodchip which is in turn delivered to the VISY papermill back in Tumut.

Working about 20 hours a day, each day, the Cascadia’s have travelled around 170,000 kilometres over 12 months.

The Freightliners are powered by DD13 Detroit Diesel engines rated at 505hp and 1850lbs/ft of torque and are equipped with DT12 overdrive automated transmissions and Meritor diffs riding on Airliner rear suspension.

The bespoke liveries are not wraps but are actual paint and were designed back in 1988 by Graham Elliott who first applied them to his then brand-new Ford LTL 9000.

The standout paint schemes have won Elliott’s the prestigious PPG Fleet of the Year award twice. The Cascadias are connected to four-axle Barker moving floor trailers which feature self-steering rear axles and have a capacity of 100 cubic metres.

Operating on the Higher Mass Limit of 50.5 tonnes the combinations deliver a 30-tonne payload. To give each truck its individual identity they are named for AC/DC songs, an idea Grant’s wife Tanya came up with.

“The fuel consumption from the Freightliners is exceptional,” says Grant.

“Bear in mind they’re doing local work and unloading up to ten loads per day with the moving floor, sitting there at idle pumping the trailer out. The trucks the Cascadias replaced averaged 1.67km/litre and the Cascadias are delivering 1.84 km/litre. That’s a big saving.”

The strategic downsizing of the Elliott’s business in 2017 subsequently led to a compact and more efficient operation according to Grant.

“We can’t downsize any further than what we are now. At the moment we’ve got a very efficient, very easy business,” he says.

“Gone are the days of trying to organise 68 people and trying to find loads all over the place. Our drivers now basically have a roster three months in advance and very rarely do we have to vary anything. We’ve got long-term drivers — some have been here over 20 years. We’ve been very mindful of being in the situation over the next few years when those drivers retire, they’re going to be very hard to replace. Today, we’re not looking for drivers, we don’t currently have a driver issue and haven’t for years, but as these drivers retire that’s going to be a challenge replacing them with good drivers.”

Reflecting on the continued success of the business Grant praises his father Graham’s vision.

“My father saw a market for pine bark many years ago when it was considered a waste product and over the years we’ve managed to get everything tied in to work together even though there are separate contracts for pine bark and wood chips,” he says.

“We also haul Tumut’s local household waste to Jugiong every day. Everything that we do fits in with the other pieces of the puzzle to make it a very efficient and profitable business.”