Steven Earl
Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame in 2019.
STEVEN EARL, known as Earl, was born in Melbourne in 1960. His parents were not involved with the transport industry but owned a shoe shop in St Albans. Earl's decision to enter his trucking life was a bit of a shock to them. He started out in the early 1980's working for himself with a small truck carting cooking oil to the local fish and chip shops. He later decided to upsize into semi trailers and put both his trucks into Lubeg Transport at Laverton. He had, by this time, an International and an Atkinson. In 1988, Earl was involved in the protests and blocked the Hume Hwy Melbourne bound with Tony Woods, and Allan Jones. They were trying to fight for better conditions for the trucking industry.
After running Lubeg's Sydney yard for a couple of years, Earl was left to his own devices they closed. He and partner Kym set up in a yard in Minto and, soon had many prized contracts like Willow Valley Cereal and So Natural Foods. By then Earl was running a couple of Mack Value liners and was employing a couple of subbies to cope with the growing demand for his services. When the business expanded, they moved into a huge yard at Kingsgrove, with storage taking with them around 20 employees. In 2003 circumstances caused him to lose everything. By 2004, after some sole searching, the family moved back to Victoria to be with family and started again. Earl now has his own family business; Earl drives interstate, Earl junior (Jake) runs the phones and the main day to day running's of the business is run by eldest daughter Jaime and youngest daughter Jessi also driving the highways also. Kym works in accounts "bringing in the bucks". They have customers sending goods anywhere from Melbourne to Perth and right up to north Queensland. Earl is very proud of his achievements in transport, although he says, his greatest achievement is being a Dad!
Earl now drives in the comfort of a 2017 Scania and just loves it. "Love the ride on the old bones!" He says life is good; getting home from a trip, chasing the grandkids around, having a BBQ, being on the farm, hopefully retiring "one day soon".