Adrian Paul “Billy” Johnson
Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame in 2022.
Adrian Paul Johnson (better known as Billy) was born in Bourke, New South Wales in March 1952. Adrian spent his early days on his parents’ family property, ‘Woolbuna’, near Quilpie, Queensland. He did his early schooling by correspondence, late primary education in Quilpie and finished Year 10 at St Joseph’s College in Sydney. Adrian’s father had worked in the transport industry before moving to Quilpie which is where Adrian started to gain an interest in trucks. He remembers he couldn’t take his eyes off the Western Transport and Marion Downs Station’s B-model Mack prime movers whenever he saw them in town.
Adrian relocated to Tambo, Queensland, in 1969 at the age of 17, to join his brothers in Johnson Bros Transport. This business grew and operated for over 40 years. Adrian’s first job was carting fuel in drums from Blackall to Tambo and surrounding stations in a V8 Petrol Dodge. He also did some fuel tanker work and a year later, was driving a Dodge Perkins. Johnson Bros Transport was the first transport business in the area to use double-deck livestock trailers and Adrian moved into the seat of an R-model single drive Mack which had a 35-foot double-decker on it with only a spread trailer. Following this, he drove a bogey drive R-model Mack, then a Mack V8-Thermodyne with 375 horsepower, towing a four-deck unit to cart livestock to Brisbane and throughout Queensland. Johnson Bros Transport was dissolved in 2016.
In 1973 Adrian married a local Tambo girl, Thora, and they had four children all of whom, at one time, were also involved in the transport industry.
One of Adrian’s greatest memories was going to the Brisbane Truck Show in 1979 to order two new Mack V8 Superliners which had just been released on the market. To his dismay, the Mack Trucks salesman refused to sell them to Johnson Bros, telling Adrian that their business wouldn’t be able to “try them out enough”! The salesman did them a favour really as the brothers then decided to purchase two W-model Kenworth prime movers. Adrian soon realised the Kenworth was the best truck he had ever driven! He never drove a Mack prime mover after that.
After 52 years in the transport industry, Adrian still drives his 2006 T904 Kenworth with a C-16 Cat motor, named ‘Still Wild’. The business trading name is now AP & TM Johnson Transport, based in Tambo. Over a half-century, Adrian has carted cattle, sheep and goats around Queensland; general freight from Sydney and Brisbane to Darwin; float work shifting bulldozers on bush tracks throughout Queensland and most recently, local side tipper and loader work.
Adrian doubts he will ever fully retire because, as he says, “It is all I know!” He is a dedicated family man with old-fashioned values and an unwavering passion for the transport industry and Kenworth prime movers. Adrian loves his job of driving and at the ripe age of 70, reckons that “every day I wake up is a bonus”.