Peter Barry Knee
Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame in 2022.
Peter Barry Knee was born in August, 1947 in Box Hill, Victoria. He left school at the age of 14 to work on his parents' orchard in Narre Warren East, Victoria. Peter's interest in trucks was sparked at this time as he travelled to Melbourne’s Queen Vic Markets with his dad to sell their fruit. Peter liked to walk around looking at all the trucks and finding out from where they came. By the time he was 18, Peter’s family were buying, packing, transporting and selling fruit out of Robinvale in north-west Victoria.
The first truck Peter drove was a Ford Thames Trader powered by a Fordson Major tractor motor with a manual hand on the driver's door as an indicator. The purchase cost in 1960 was £1,100. In 1967, Peter did his first trip to Robinvale driving a 1967 Ford 500 with a petrol motor. He started off carting 250 – 300 boxes of oranges per weekly trip and ended up doing three trips a week.
In 1969 Peter drove a Ford D750, then his first semi-trailer, a Dodge 760 petrol, single drive with a 38-foot Haulmark trailer, followed by a Dodge D5N rigid with a 23-foot tray. He carted drums of fuel and oil out of Shell Newport in Melbourne to Dandenong and also loaded fertiliser out of Pivot Fertilisers in Geelong, Victoria.
In 1982 Peter’s family started a transport business, carting produce from Piangil in north west Victoria to the Footscray Market. Later on, they carted grain using flat tops with grain shoots before advancing to tippers using convertibles. The fleet included various Ford Louisville models (LNT's, LTS and LTL's) and International S-Line trucks.
In 1998 Peter, his wife Kathy and their son, Barry, started their own business with a 1998 International Transtar and a Nissan UD before buying a Western Star, a Freightliner Argosy, Kenworth prime movers and an Izusi twin steer rigid with a 14-pallet fridge van. During this period, Peter used many different trailer combinations carting fresh produce one way and returning to north-west Victoria with farming inputs and general freight.
Peter’s favourite memory of his driving career was being awarded the Nat Road ‘Professional Driver of the Year’ award in 2006 which was totally unexpected and a great surprise!
After the 2009 bush fires Peter donated his services to transport numerous loads of hay and goods to the affected Flowerdale and Coldstream areas in Victoria. Right up until his retirement in March 2022, Peter was still driving trucks, operating forklifts, doing farm pickups and deliveries as well as managing the company.
