ROADBOSS captures the blood, sweat and tears involved in transporting 600-odd head of cattle more than 800km from Central Western Queensland to a feedlot near Dalby – all in a day’s work for Australia’s largest family-owned cattle carrier, Fraser’s Livestock Transport
Roma at dusk is quite the sight, especially when a convoy of Kenworths rolls methodically out of town.
We’re following six green-and-white T659s lugging a combination of Byrne Trailers’ road-trains, B-triples and a B-double.
This is the beginning of an 800-kilometre road trip for Fraser’s Livestock Transport.
They’re setting off towards an expansive cattle station north-east of Tambo in Central Western Queensland and in two days’ time will arrive at the feedlots near Dalby with more than 600 head of cattle. Quite the adventure!
For many, this lift is big, but for one of Australia’s largest family-owned livestock transporters, it’s just an honest day’s work.
“It’s the wild west out here isn’t it mate,” driver Cameron Jefferies says to me while leaning on the steps of his tidy Kenworth.
Like all good chat, it happens around the toolbox. “It’s a holiday every day out here, I don’t think I could do another job, except maybe farming,” he adds.
No doubt plenty will disagree with his sentiment – livestock transport certainly isn’t for everyone. There’s lots of cow shit for starters!
He can recite old trips in the cab with his dad like it was yesterday. These memories are certainly defining, and he has a strong admiration for the land and beast … because it’s in his blood.
To him, who wouldn’t want to be a truck driver? Yes, your home life isn’t like the usual Joe, the constant travel can “strain the wife’s patience”, but driving trucks, more importantly for Fraser’s, was not an option.
But you know he isn’t putting on a façade because Jefferies, 40-odd, is a third-generation Fraser’s driver. His father drove for the iconic Queensland livestock transporter, as did his grandfather and step-grandfather.
And funnily enough, that’s the way Fraser’s patriarch Ross Fraser likes them.
Unlike your ordinary truck driving job, there is a real moral responsibility that comes with hauling a living creature, and this demands a certain person to be involved as far as drivers go.
Not only must you be a good driver, but you’ve also got to be a good stockperson.
“Livestock welfare is the most important aspect of what we do and we employ people who are passionate about livestock and concerned about their load,” Fraser says.
“We have a saying that it’s easier to teach a stockperson how to drive a truck than it is to teach a truck driver how to be a stockperson.
“That’s not a hundred per cent across the board. You do get exceptions to that, but in the main, the person who can handle livestock is the best.”
That first truck
That hunch ultimately proved to be a worthy one, with the company nearing its 80th birthday.
So the story goes, Ross Fraser’s father and mother, Charlie and Edna Fraser, took the plunge into transport towards the end of the Second World War.
A friend of Charlie Fraser planted the initial seed to buy that first truck. “He said to him, ‘Charlie, I think you need to buy a little truck, I think there’s a future in carting livestock’,” Fraser explains.
“In 1944, most of the livestock was driven on road by horseback.”
So Charlie Fraser and Edna, with a loan from his grandfather, bought a little Ford with a 15-foot body on it and began carting bagged grain to and fro for various farmers.
From grain, Fraser’s pivoted to transporting “old chooks” to abattoirs, travelling between their base in Warwick and Brisbane before settling into general livestock.
Family affair
The loan Charlie Fraser received from his grandfather to buy that first truck totalled 100 pounds. Prophetically, on the steps of the Queensland National Bank in Warwick, his grandfather told Charlie “One day, you might have a fleet of trucks”.
A lifetime later, Fraser’s is one of the biggest family-owned livestock transport businesses in the land, with a fleet of more than 50 Kenworth trucks, and just like the Jefferies family, is onto its third generation.
Warwick Fraser, son of Ross’s brother Les, took over the helm as director of the business in 2020, and like his uncles and father, shares a passion for the family business and a hard-wired love for livestock.
In fact, the livestock game is predominately made up of family businesses. The reason is similar to why Fraser’s love to employ people from the land: you’re born into it.
“I really think Australia was built on successful family businesses. For instance, when you look at livestock transport, the biggest bulk of livestock transport in Australia, if not all of them, are family businesses,” Fraser says.
“Livestock is not an industry where corporate Australia likes to play – in my opinion, it’s a fairly difficult industry and you’ve got to know the industry. It’s an industry that can’t be run from the boardroom.”
Mighty musters
It’s the stories of swashbuckling cattle lifts during the early years that confirm there’s no room for corporates in this world. And this is what inspired us to tag along on this trip.
Adventures like moving dairy cows from Adelaide to Bowen in 1967. Ross Fraser was behind the wheel on this trip, driving an old Comma Knocker with 15 Friesians in the crate.
The cows were in full milk at the time, so Fraser organised to stop at dairies daily to milk the cows.
Or Fraser’s largest logistical move ever, hauling 6,500 pigs to Darwin. Reminiscent of an epic cattle drive from a Larry McMurtry novel, the job took four months to complete.
“It was the biggest logistical challenge we ever had. We took 6,500 breeder pigs from the Darling Downs to Darwin,” he recalls.
“We did it in four lifts and it took the best part of about four months. In those days we could only hook road-trains up in Toowoomba.
“We then went to Mitchell, west of Roma, and hooked the third one up so we had three trucks and five drivers each trip.
“It was a big logistical exercise. We had PVC pipes in each pen and a truck to water the pigs. The water truck travelled with the convoy. Every time we stopped, we watered the pigs.”
Pushing boundaries
Stories like these are endless with a company so rich in history like Fraser’s.
More importantly, it shows how pivotal road transport is in Australia and how advanced we are in solutions. Charlie Fraser was at the forefront of livestock transport last century as the country transitioned from cattle drives to trucks.
And his sons, Ross, Les and Peter, were at the forefront of pushing road transport boundaries with road-trains and higher-productivity trailer combinations. There is a stark contrast between a Fraser’s truck in 1944 and 2023.
“Look, the advancements are just huge, and thank goodness they are,” Ross Fraser says.
“Roads are so much better and vehicles are so much better. Coming from the old days, you just couldn’t believe the truck comforts would be so good compared to what they were.
“It took us three days to do a job of 1,000 kilometres. Now we do it in a day pulling two and three trailers and doing it easy,” he adds.
But one thing Ross Fraser admits has stayed the same is the thrill of the adventure. “I can back up Cameron’s words. These operators are seeing something amazing every day they get onto a property way out in a distance somewhere and see blue sky as far as you can see,” he says.
“You’d hear a pin drop 30 feet away. Beautiful nights in rural and regional Australia, just absolutely magic.”
Maybe Cameron Jefferies was right? Think about it, the horsepower, the outback vistas, the cattle and dust, it’s a thrilling journey that seeps into the skin and invigorates the adventurous spirit in us all.
While our journey seems insignificant in comparison to the epic stories just told, what Jefferies said over the toolbox seems true.
Day broke, and the sun flared off the sides of the trailers as they unloaded all 600-odd head. I took a glimpse of what he was talking about. It could very well be a holiday, every day!
