A family-run transport company that operated at Dubbo for four decades achieved industry firsts and provided employment to scores of drivers, in a legacy that continues today.
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Walker’s Transport created enduring bonds for the 240 people, including about 150 workers and their partners, who gathered for a reunion in the city on Saturday.
Among them was Ian Walker, who founded the company at Dubbo in 1960, building it up from one truck to 42 trucks at its height.
As reminiscences flowed at the reunion, the now 83-year-old found he was warmly regarded as an employer, his son Garry said.
Comments were it was always a pleasure to work for the Walker family because firstly they made you feel like family, and secondly, you always got paid, he said.
“People said to me ‘that’s why we’re all here, we’re one big family’,” Garry said.
“That brought Dad to a tear.”
Garry, who was managing director before the company was sold to Gordon Martin in 2004, said his father was a “pioneer”.
The company played a pivotal role in the process to make it legal for road trains to travel to Dubbo from Queensland in the late 1980s, carrying out a trial, Garry said.
There had been a time of drought, and the numbers of sheep coming into Dubbo needed to be maintained “to keep the abattoir going to keep the town going”.
“If the abattoir had closed it would have had a massive impact,” he said.
“Transport is the backbone of Dubbo.”
Dubbo-based transport industry advocate John Morris made friendships driving for the company in the 1970s.
“A lot of the drivers, even when they were driving on the highway, you’d spend a couple hours a day in a roadhouse catching up and talking about everything,” he said.
“And you made a lot of really good close mates in those days and all the drivers were very close to each other.”
Attendees came from as far away as New Zealand, the United States, the Kimberley, Queensland, western NSW and Melbourne.