William “Bill” Andrews

Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame at ReUnion 2007.

Bill Andrews was born at Ourimbah in 1937, the fourth child of nine. His father carted logs for Brownlee timber mill until they moved to Sydney in 1942. He left school at 15 and worked in a timber yard at Chiswick for eight months before working on a wheat farm at Bribbaree. This is where he drove his first truck. He loved it!

Bill returned home at 17 and at 18 got his truck licence and worked for Yellow Express carting from Darling Harbour rail to the local wool stores for about two and a half years.

Bill worked for Westgate, then Mercury Transport before driving refrigerated vans for Tom Bruce from 1958 to 1963, when the company was taken over by Mainline transport who introduced the Peterbilt range into Australia. Together with Laurie O'Neill, Bill drove the first trip at Mainline starting their two-driver system. He continued working for Mainline until they ceased operation and then moved to Caringbah Haulage where he worked driving interstate.

When Seatons Transport started two-up with the new fleet of Kenworths, Bill went over to them, later moving to Alltrans where Bill ran Adelaide two-up in their new Peterbilts for 18 months. Bill went back to Seatons driving the new White trucks and then worked for Ron Phillips driving his Peterbilt before buying his own truck in 1969, a MAN. With his own truck now he is contracted to Streets Ice Cream pulling their freezer vans to regional and interstate depots all over the country as required.

Bill, and son Craig, built up a small family business operating four Kenworth trucks.

Bill continued driving both long distance and local runs until finally retiring in 2003 after 50 years in the trucking industry.