Emmanuel ‘Casey’ Zarb
Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame in 2023.
Emmanuell Zarb, commonly known as Casey Zarb immigrated from Malta at the age of 11. He and his family settled in the Pioneer Valley outside Mackay, Queensland, on a family cane farm. Casey married Marjorie Warddrop and they settled in Syned St, Mackay, where they started raising their family.
Casey and one of his brothers purchased a few businesses together over several years and in 1958 the opportunity arose to start a new business with Mackay/Pioneer Valley Sugar Industry.
Casey purchased several trucks and trailers to start transportation of whole stick cane to the mills. On the 1st of July, 1966 he formed the company now commonly known as Zarb Road Transport.
Casey developed a working relationship with the Mackay Sugar Industry where he assisted in the improvements and development of changes to the transportation of sugar cane into billets. The opportunity arose for Casey to expand the business to transporting raw sugar and molasses from two of the five local sugar mills, alongside two other local Mackay transport companies.
Over the years, and with changes to vehicle designs, Zarb Road Transport (ZRT) worked with Mackay Sugar to change the transportation, operation and increase of pay load and productivity of both milling and transportation. One such development was the Roll on/Roll off system that was trialed for Marian Mill in the Mt. Martin and Owen’s Creek areas with machine harvest cane being transported in the mill. As part of this trial ZRT manufactured their own tram trucks at McLennan Street, about 700 in number and also purchased the bins that went with them. The trial of Roll on/Roll off road transport was successful and as a result the company secured the contract for all of both whole-stick and chopped cane to the mill, previously hauled by the Queensland Railways.
With the closure of three of the local Mackay mills, ZRT increased their fleet size. They also improved the vehicle design to help comply with the change in requirements in operations that were necessary to assist the remaining mills transition to a 24-hour a day, 7 days a week operation.
During the drier periods of the early 1990s, Casey also branched out into the transportation of molasses as stock feed to the Western Queensland communities. Casey managed the business for a period of years before handing the business to his son David Zarb, who is currently still managing the business. Casey died in 2018.
