Company History

Without a brief history of the family business, Simon Pty Ltd., which was started by my great grandfather in 1926, this story cannot be written. Our company grew out of that business and much of our success is because of the attitudes to business and to clients forged in a business environment very different to transport.

Morgan Hugh Simon left his position as Deputy Director of the Queensland Forestry Department and after a period as manager of a plywood mill, purchased a sawmill at Cooyar in 1926. He sold much of the timber from the mill in Toowoomba and through hard work and by providing the best possible service to his customers, developed a business of four sawmills, at that time the largest timber business on the Darling Downs. Some timber was sold in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and since 1938 the Northern Territory. His death on 11th March, 1987, at 98 years of age was, in a sense, the “end of an era” for our family business.

Other businesses associated with the sawmilling have been developed over the years. My grandfather, Walter M. Simon, developed the hardware, roof truss, wall framing and most significantly for Simon Transport Pty Ltd, the timber treatment and pole supply division of the company, as it was the pole supply business which resulted in the company’s move into the transport industry.

We commenced treating electric light poles in 1960 and my father, Morgan Simon, became involved with this part of the business shortly after starting work with the company in 1962. The pole business developed fairly quickly and in 1967 we purchased our first truck to carry poles from the Northern Rivers of New South Wales to Toowoomba for treatment and from there to power lines in Western Queensland.

In September 1968 we were experiencing difficulties with the shipping services carrying our timber to Darwin, so Ray Love and Morgan took our first load of timber to Darwin by road. That event was our entry into general road transport. Incidentally, Ray Love retired from our company in 1995, one of many employees to reach 20 or more years of service with Simon National Carriers. We actively promoted our services to Darwin and over the next five years developed a highly-respected service from Brisbane, Sydney and Toowoomba to the Northern Territory.

In July 1973 our Company, Simon Transport Pty Ltd., was formed from the transport division of Simon Pty Ltd and our business is now run completely separately from Simon Pty Ltd. However, the influence of our parent business has greatly affected the nature of our business.

Simon Pty Ltd, particularly in its hardware division, was very much at the receiving end of transport services and so we learnt very early the problems of transport from the customers’ point of view. We consider it very fortunate that we started in transport knowing and appreciating the customers’ problems and we have always stressed this aspect of our business - service, service, service - to our staff. It was this experience and my grounding in a business where honesty and integrity are of paramount importance which have been the main factors contributing to our companies success.

Another highly important factor has been the tremendous loyalty and dedication of our staff, as already mentioned. Most of our senior staff have come up through the ranks from drivers to salesmen, managers and in David Smith’s case, to National Operations Manager. Thirty years ago, he was driving road trains to Darwin and experience such as his and that of our whole management team is invaluable. Incidentally, David Smith retired in Dec 2003, with more than 30 years service to the company. An indication of our staff loyalty is the fact that our staff have never gone on strike.

In the early 1980’s we decided to diversify from purely carriers to the Northern Territory to being general interstate carriers. This generated considerably more work for our branches in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide and resulted in our developing branches in Townsville, Perth and agents throughout Australia.

To help us to control the vastly expanded business which developed and to further improve our information services to our clients, we developed a computer system which links our branches to Head Office in Toowoomba, enabling us to track freight from when it is received until it is delivered. We have continued to enhance our information systems, and these provide both Simon National Carriers and our clients with significant advantages in our respective markets through analysis and reporting.

We are constantly endeavouring to reduce costs to provide the best value for money service to our customers. For many years now we have offered rail services to our customers on longer haul routes such as Melbourne and Sydney to Perth, From the southern states to Darwin we have utilised a combination of road and rail – the go ahead for the Alice Springs to Darwin rail line will no doubt lead to growth in the use of this service. We also offer our clients shipping services for suitable freight between the east coast and Perth.

Our direct road services continue to provide the express service required by many of our clients, but we will continue to expand the rail services, which are of particular benefit to clients with very dense freight who can obtain considerable savings over road services.

We are continually upgrading our linehaul fleet to ensure we obtain the benefits of improved fuel economy, lower vehicle emissions, reduced maintenance costs, and optimum vehicle configurations such as B-Doubles and longer trailers. We retain a large company-owned fleet to provide the best possible line-haul service to our clients. We also provide specialised trailers to customers, including drop decks, tautliners, extendables, and “prairie” wagons with a slide back roof, ensuring minimal loading time, and reduced risk of injury by eliminating the tarping process. Many of these trailers provide our customers with a cost effective means of advertising their product through signwriting. Our rail fleet comprises around 100 containers, many of them side-loading containers enabling loading by customers in a similar manner to a normal road unit.

Our company has continued to expand during depressed business cycles, a result which can be largely attributed to the efforts and dedication of our staff. I will list below some of our physical assets to give you an idea of the services we can provide, but our greatest asset is undoubtedly our people.

In Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne we operate from purpose built transport terminals, each between 22,000m2 and 32,000m2 in size. We also operate off site warehousing for some of our customers in these cities, an area in which we have seen considerable growth in recent years.

We have our own branches in Adelaide, Darwin, Hobart, Perth, Townsville, and Toowoomba. In total we currently offer over 110,000m2 of warehousing capacity to our customers.

Our line-haul fleet consist of around 100 prime movers, 150 trailers and over 100 containers. Of course, we have adequate local trucks (around 60) and forklifts to support this line-haul fleet and provide top service to our clients.

I hope that this history gives you some insight into the operation of our company today. We are a service-oriented business in what is a purely service industry and we back this with my personal guarantee to you.

David Simon