Anthony (Tony) Eggleston

Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame at ReUnion 2009.

Anthony (Tony) Eggleston was born on May 6th, 1929 and is now retired from driving.  Most of his working life was spent driving low-loaders and managing heavy load logistics and movements for Beamish Heavy Haulers in Melbourne.

Tony started working as a wool buyer, but decided to become a part of the world of earthmoving in the early 1950s.  He started working with Reynolds Brothers and was involved in the development of many suburbs in Melbourne, as well as dam construction and clearing land for Soldier Settlements.
In those days the equipment had to be floated to the site, move the earth, and then float onto the next job.  Eventually he left Reynolds and did the same sort of work with Doug Stanley Earthmovers, before joining Beamish in the early 1960s carting heavy haulage loads throughout Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and even to Queensland.  Tony got his licence in a Capital Chev truck, which was always very hot and had celluloid side-curtains, "but was very easy to fix when it broke down".  He then graduated to a lease-lend Chevrolet before moving into a "Big Rig", a KB6 International prime-mover.  He managed to earn about two pounds a week and was thrilled.

In those days there was a lot of good camaraderie because you always saw the same truck drivers.  There were lots of basic semis and tray-trucks and very few floats but the roads were not busy.  It was hard work and overloading was not such a problem, "Safety was out the door".  Besides the KB6, Tony drove a Seddon, NR Mack, B61 Mack, 815 Mack V-8 and finished in an S-model Kenworth.  His favourite truck was the B-model Mack because it was a solid truck that was built around the driver.

Heavy haulage work is a very specialised industry and Beamish Heavy Haulers had a good reputation for having excellent equipment and professional drivers and operators.

They were reliable and carried many types of over-dimensional loads.