John Irvin
Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame in 2023.
John William Irvin was born in October 1947, he was raised on a farm at Pulletop 30kms south of Wagga Wagga. John grew up working hard on the family farm. From as young as seven, he along with his sister Lois, would operate the harvester and tractor. Before long they would drive their father’s Bedford truck loaded with wheat to Holbrook, Henty and Culcairn, New South Wales. John’s father, Ron Irvin, was well known as the ‘go to man’ to fix anything and was very good at improvising, he owned one of the first welders in the district which generated power off a tractor drive shaft. John would learn from this and later use these skills to design a product that you will have no trouble spotting on the road wherever you may be in Australia for many years to come.
John attended boarding school at Albury Grammar but showed very little interest in school, in class he would sit and draw trucks with bullbars on them and that was before trucks even had bullbars! In the yard at school, John would spend a lot of time standing by the fence watching trucks drive by. He later began his apprenticeship as a mechanic working on tractors and then moved on to a new employer where he worked on trucks. His first job as a truck driver was at the age of 18 for Ron Finemore Transport, transporting sheep to Melbourne.
In 1972, whilst working from the rear of his father’s property at Gumly Gumly, John designed and manufactured his first bulbar, which he fitted to a C Line International that he had purchased during his apprenticeship. Once out on the road the bullbar was so popular amongst fellow drivers that John began receiving requests to make more.
In the mid-1970s Irvin Bullbars opened in Copland St, Wagga Wagga and by 1978 Irvin Bullbars was sending bullbars all over Australia. John and his younger brother Phillip would take a load as far as Western Australia on the back of a Holden 1 tonner ute and trailer. The demand was high out west, so John and his brother Phillip set up a factory in Esperance, Western Australia. Due to bullbars being called ‘roo bars’ in Western Australia people assumed Bullbar was John’s surname, so he started receiving mail addressed to Mr Bullbar, hence the brand name MR BULLBAR came to life.
While his brother Phillip remained in Esperance making bullbars, in 1980 John returned to Wagga Wagga and set up the business MR BULLBAR in Lawson Street where he remains today. John recently celebrated 50 years in business with some of his longest standing customers who, over the years, have become great friends such as Keith and Carol Thompson from Thompsons Transport.
In 2004 John purchased a Kenworth SAR and restored it to new condition, this was the beginning of ‘MR BULLBAR Transport’. Soon after the business expanded and in partnership with his stepdaughter, Monique Rinaldi, the business was re-named ‘Irvin Rinaldi Transport’ and had a fleet of ten trucks.
‘The idea is not to live forever but to create something that will’, and it is with such a passion for the transport industry that John Irvin has done exactly that.
