Steven (Zorba) Woodward
Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame in 2022.
Steven Woodward, (known as ‘Zorba’), was born in Kiama, New South Wales in February 1960, the eldest of two children.
At 18, Steven started work at Brambles in Wollongong, New South Wales, where he worked his way up from fuelling the fleet, to the jacking crew which loaded the trucks to parts storeman. After 12 months, Steven was driving an old Bedford, carting pipe fittings around the steelworks before moving onto vehicle escort work. In 1979, Steve met and married his wife, Joanne, and they went on to have two sons, Adam and Beau.
At work, Steven was eventually given the keys to his first prime mover, an R600 Mack, after which he drove a White 4000, a 1984 Volvo F12 Slimline Cab, a Kenworth T650, then a 1996 Mack Titan and most recently, his beloved Volvo. From the start of his driving career in the 1980’s, Steven has been involved in some of the biggest heavy haulage moves in the country. He has become a master of multiple truck and ‘push-pull’ operations, and he has developed a unique and highly specialised skillset. Aways keen to share his knowledge, Steven is known for frequently mentoring young people in the industry, including his own son who assisted in moving the largest mobile crane in the country, at the time, in a dual truck operation.
When Brambles was sold in 2008, Steve moved to Nationwide Transport Solutions where he continued to excel in heavy haulage and quickly proved himself to be an excellent lead driver. He travelled Australia, transporting windfarms, switch rooms, earthmoving gear and anything else that looked far too big to be loaded onto a truck! When the business was acquired by Toll Transport in 2014, Steve stayed on with the new company, continuing to serve the loyal customers he has worked with for over 40 years.
Steven’s largest and most favourite ‘adventure’ was a six-month project in 1997, hauling six 300 tonne vessels (7.1m high) from Bendigo, Victoria, to Port Headland in Western Australia. Nothing that high had ever been moved from east to west and it took 12 months of careful planning to organise the route: in places, power cables had to be raised so the loads could pass.
Some of the more unusual loads that Steven has carted include a 160-tonne tunnel-borer for underground tunnel works, taken from Port Kembla to the Manly Sewerage Plant, New South Wales, in 1999. The borer was pulled by Steve and two other trucks.
He also transported the submarine motors for the Australian built Collins Class Submarines. Steven would cart the motors to Newcastle from where the cargo was shipped to Adelaide, South Australia. Steven would meet the boat and cart the motors to the building yards. Steven would also spend a week at a time moving a 380-tonne Highwall Miner throughout the extensive Moura Mine in Central Queensland as needed.
Steven has taught, advised and mentored many within the heavy haulage transport industry, from drivers and coordinators to managers. His in-depth knowledge, resilience and passion for the transport industry is an inspiration for those around him and his family. Steven found the hardest part of his job was the amount of time he spent away from his family but even on the ‘hard yakka’ days when he changed tyre after tyre out on the road, Steven always loved what he did.