Stuart McColl
Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame at Reunion 2007.
Stuart McColl was raised in the lush dairying country of Port Fairy in the heartland of the western districts of Victoria. At the outbreak of World War II he joined the army serving in New Guinea and Darwin with the 2nd AIF and achieving the rank of 2nd Lieutenant.
After the end of hostilities he returned to Port Fairy to resume farming, later moving into Geelong to take up the management of the Polar Dairy. In 1952 Stuart and his wife, June, formed McColls Milk Transport and began farm milk pick-ups utilising two F600s.
Stuart would do a milk run dropping empty cans and returning to Polar with full ones. To help the farmers out when picking up cream and eggs, he would deliver bran and pollard. McColls continued to grow with Stuart buying out his competitors. In the late 1950s, Andersons Engineering of north Geelong built McColl's first semi-trailer tanker, a single-axle unit of 1834 gallon (8344 litre) capacity. There was a variety of prime-movers including a bonneted Albion, a Perkins-powered Commer and a Dodge pulling a 30 foot semi. The company then branched out into general freight and chemical tankers. A new depot had to be built. Over the years they ran Ford, Volvo, International, Mack, Scania and Kenworth but Stuart always preferred Mercedes Benz as his favourite truck.
The 1990s saw McColls take over the farm pick-up division of Nestle' of Tongala, open a general freight shed in Sunshine, as well as committing to a Sydney interstate depot. The turn of the new millennium saw Stuart still coming into work on a daily basis looking after the company's wide-spread fleet and insurance needs although he had been succeeded as the general manager by his son-in-law, David Stevens. 2005 saw McColls Transport sold to a huge Dutch banking conglomerate, ABN AMRO, with both Stuart and David retiring after a lifetime in road transport.
Stuart was presented with Rotary's prestigious Paul Harris Fellowship Award for his meritorious service. Today, he and June spend quite a bit of time overlooking the beach at their holiday home in Torquay, Victoria.
