Price Hill
Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame at Reunion 2000.
Price Alexander Hill was raised on a farm near Culcairn, NSW and rode 14 miles to school on a pony. As a 17 year old, he borrowed two hundred pounds for a deposit on an International truck, paying it off in six months carting timber. His enterprising life pioneering interstate trucking had begun.
In 1924 young Price bought a five ton International 103 and began a lifelong battle with bureaucracy. By 1929 he had six trucks in his fleet hauling between Albury and Melbourne. By 1933, Price had 23 trucks and a number of buses. The railways, not impressed with competition, offered Price's clients a reduced rate to switch to rail. When this was declined the railway called on the NSW Government to bring an end to road transport. Price's trucks were then continuously targeted by overzealous transport inspectors and barely a day went by that he wasn't fined or harassed in one way or another by the authorities.
In 1934 Price decided to take the Government to court but predictably the court eventually ruled in favour of the NSW Government. Price sought leave to appeal to the Privy Council but was rejected. Not surprisingly, the NSW Government stepped up its campaign against Price's business and the sad day came that the finance company moved in to repossess the trucks. Price Hill had lost his battle but the road transport industry was determined to win the war. Twenty years later, in the historic Hughes and Vale case of 1954, the Privy Council in London handed down a landmark decision on appeal from the High Court of Australia. The Council had found that the NSW Government State Transport Coordination was in contravention of Section 92 of the Australian Constitution which guaranteed freedom of trade between the states. This is what Price Hill tried to tell them twenty years previously.
Price Hill has earned his place on the Wall of Fame."He taught us honesty, integrity, to always achieve our highest, to respect yourself, and that family should always come first," said a tribute published in the Corryong news following his death in 2009.
