William “Johnny” Carriage

Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame at ReUnion 2015.

With the name like William (Johnny) Carriage, what more would you expect, than truck drivers spanning well over five generations and heading into the sixth. With the cousins, the nephews, the ancestors and descendants, truck driving for the Carriage family is like baking for the baker. In fact, with just Johnny and two older sons, Steven and Derek, there is almost 100 years of combined, continual truck driving.

The trucking icon of the Carriage family, is Johnny, also known by many, as The Moth, usually found under a street light somewhere, inspecting, retying, changing tyres, is just about to turn 80 and has thousands of hours driving, millions of miles on the road and just as many stories.

Johnny Carriage could help driving, as truck shaped DNA courses through his veins like oil through a split shift, 15 speed gearbox. From his birth in 1935, driving him through school, which he usually wagged so he could spend time as his own dad's offsider, delivering the mail and other goods, until he was allowed behind the wheel of his own Golden Fleece fuel tanker at the age of 17 in 1952 to deliver fuel for WJ Otton of Bega.

With many stints driving for others, in 1971, Johnny went on to become his own boss with his old grey dodge,then as a proud new owner of the blue MAN in 1973, which roamed many a road for all those that contracted Carriage Haulage over 11 yrs.

With a very proud wife Lola by his side since 1960, he went on to be knighted by a Bega newspaper, after publishing a front page article on the Sheehan Brothers milk tanker drivers that drove all night. During this time, he also played with woodchips as he drove a chip bin back and forth for Eden's Fred Tetley from numerous chip mills around New South Wales.

Trucks it was, trucks it is and trucks it will always be (even Lola knows she comes second best!) Trucks are to Johnny, like oxygen is to the earth. He breathes, dreams, talks, sleeps, and thinks nothing but trucks.