Seventy years on the road is no mean feat. For Brisbane-based transport operator The Careful Carriers, it’s a badge of pride they wear with honour.
A family business, the story started in 1954 when Sid Smith bought with his very first truck, which, like many operators post-World War II, was an old Bedford. A loyal man, Sid stuck with his first ever customer, who he hauled paper products for around south-east Queensland, and The Careful Carriers continued with them for 65 years.
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Things look a little bit different now, with Sid’s grandson Zacc at the helm of the business. While Sid was delivering single cartons in his Bedford, this continued to evolve with the decades, to semi-trailers, and now four Hinos, which make up the current fleet.
Zacc is the third generation of Smiths running The Careful Carriers, taking over from his father Kenneth 20 years ago and continuing to grow the business ever since. “Being a family business, it was a big part of our life growing up,” Zacc says.
“I remember every time dad bought a new truck, he’d bring it home so he could show it to us.
“That was some of my earliest memories. I’ve got a picture with my grandfather with one of his old Commers.
“When I first started, we had an old Bedford and two Internationals, an ACCO C and ACCO D.”
Zacc has been a Hino customer for more than 30 years, even going for his truck licence in a Hino GD before he joined The Careful Carriers.
While he doesn’t have to do much driving, leaving that to his fleet of experienced drivers, it comes in handy more often than he anticipated.
“I like taking the trucks for a service or to get washed,” he says.
“Driving is something I do when I can, I still love it, but there’s no need for me to do it as much anymore.”
While he now handles the operations side of the business, Zacc first started driving for his dad, giving him a wider view of what it takes to make a transport business tick.
He was driving an SBR Isuzu flat top hauling toilet paper, which he says gave him the opportunity to “earn his stripes”.
“Every load needed to be tarped heavily – I really started from the ground up,” Zacc says.
“I certainly didn’t jump to management straight away. It took me quite a few years to go anywhere near that. When I first started, I was given the older civil trucks. But I was never pushed into the business.
“That was one thing my father was very big on. It was my own decision. I went away to backpack through Europe for six months, and came back and truly decided that’s the way I wanted to go.
“So I had to learn Brisbane and body trucks first up. We would do a lot of hospital deliveries and very tight little places. Then I moved into semi-trailers and was doing a lot of grocery runs.”
