Mervyn Walker

Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame at Reunion 2010.

Mervyn Walker was born on the 25th March 1921, in Aramac in central western Qld, and passed away on the 20th July 2006 in Yeppoon where he spent his retirement. He spent approximately sixty years in the trucking industry as the founder of Mervyn Walker & Co in Aramac.

He started in the early 50s with a mail run in the Aramac area delivering main and groceries to outlying properties in a Thames Trader truck for this purpose. He bought wool back from these properties to the Aramac Railway Station, which was then sent to Brisbane.

Mervyn decided that there was opportunity in running in opposition to the railway and purchased a Commer Knocker for this purpose. As he didn't have a licence to deliver to Brisbane Wool Stores, he had to take the wool through Brisbane and down to Tweed Heads where it was offloaded on to a NSW truck and taken back to the Wool Stores (known in those days as border hopping). In those days, the round trip over dirt roads from Aramac to Tweed Heads would take a week or thereabouts. Rather then coming back to Aramac empty, he bought fuel from COR (eventually to become BP), which he then sold, at a small mark up, from his fuel depot in Aramac.

Mervyn progressed to carting livestock around the Aramac district in his small fleet of four Deutz trucks. Eventually he had several double deckers running stock to the Roma and Dalby area sales. Together with his sons, Mervyn built all the stock crates at his home depot. Some of his contracts included carting stock from Humbert River in the Northern Territory to Fleetwood in Aramac, kangaroo carcasses from the central west as well as horse carcasses from the Territory to the St George meatworks.

Mervyn was a practical man who made a thriving business from nothing, never shirking the hard work involved. He was a truckie who worked in an era where life was tough, and life on the road even tougher. He spent most of his life in the central west connecting his community with many other parts of the nation.