Roger Bigg

Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame in 2017.

Roger Bigg known as Edgell to family and friends, Roger was born in Balaklava, South Australia on the 13th of April in 1955. As soon as he was old enough Roger started driving trucks. His first job, in his late teens, was with Wiech Transport out of Blyth, South Australia. Wiech's had a diverse business and Roger did anything from carting livestock to grain as well as working in the depot maintaining the trucks and trailers.

In the late 1970's Wiech purchased Hawker Transport providing work into northern South Australia, Alice Springs, Broken Hill and northern New South Wales. This expansion resulted in the transition from single deck stock crates to three and four decks, road trains and B-doubles. After a couple years Roger moved on to Calomba Transport based in the mid north carting anything from livestock, hay and grain to general. Roger also carted bore casing for the oil rigs to Moomba in roadtrains. Before long he was running all over South Australia and Queensland.

Roger first started running to Darwin a week after the city was devastated by Cyclone Tracy in 1974. He loved running the 'Old South Road' between Adelaide and Darwin. In those days it was little more than an un formed dirt track from Port Augusta to Alice Springs and a single lane deteriorating patch of tar from there to Darwin. It was hard going but the camaraderie and mate ship made up for it.

Roger went to work for Jeff Gilbert carting general and stockfeed to and from Adelaide to Darwin for the next ten years. He then started with McBride Transport based in Alice Springs. He worked carting general, perishable goods and groceries from the railhead in Alice Springs to Woolworths in Darwin running the third trailers to Port Augusta, and doing the odd change over. After Bunkers took over McBride's Roger went to work for Northern Territory Freight Service ( NTFS ).

As of today, in 2017, Roger is still very much involved in transport and in servicing the Northern Territory from the NTFS depot in Port Adelaide. He does pickups and deliveries and puts containers on the freight link train bound for Alice Springs and Darwin.