Mervyn Ross

Mervyn was born on March 10 1960 in Brisbane. Merv started in the road transport industry as an apprentice diesel mechanic at Morgans Freezer Freight in Brisbane in 1974. After completing his apprenticeship Merv starting driving interstate for Morgans carting hanging meat, produce and express freight running Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Cairns driving a K125 cabover Kenworth towing refrigerated vans.

After Mayne Nickless close Morgans transport on April 20 1984 Merv moved to Killarney and started work for Wickham Farms carting potatoes and timber to Brisbane and Sydney. With Merv's experience in the hanging meat industry Merv worked with Peter and Angus Wickham to set up a refrigerated meat transport business carting pork carcasses out of Kingaroy Bacon Factory to Sydney returning to Brisbane with express parcels for McPhees.

During Merv's time at Wickhams he has driven nearly all of the Kenworth model range but by far his favorite was a 1986 W925 with the first electronic 892 Detroit. This truck was also the 1000 Kenworth Brown & Hurley Kyogle sold and was painted yellow with brown strips to coincide with Brown & Hurley's company colours at the time. After wearing out the W model, Angus Wickham bought Merv a new T600 Anteater painted the same colours to match his existing meat van. Merv's trucks were well known up and down the New England Highway as the Bumble Bee due to the distinctive yellow and brown livery compared to the normal Wickhams red and white.

Good mate and boss Graham Keogh would often be heard saying Merv is not very well known for his fuel economy but is extremely well known for getting it there. After running interstate for 33 years up and down the eastern sea board Merv moved into operations in the Warwick terminal. Merv has recently attended the DECA driver education centre in Wodonga , Victoria and completed their heavy vehicle training course and is now qualified to deliver DECA driving programs to all Wickham Freight Lines drivers as well as all other driver development and training.