Deals on Wheels #464

Left to right: Luke
Sheridan with two of
his drivers – Ruskin
and Scott
which quickly became jammed solid in its
frame – it wouldn’t go in and wouldn’t come
out due to the uneven incline.
“I ended up having to reverse the trailer
down the hill with the forklift hanging
out from the side of the trailer suspended
precariously over parked cars, until I could
find some flat ground on which to unload it.
“I then ended up breaking up three or four
packs of bricks which I had to re-stack for
delivery. I rang the company, told them this
wasn’t for me, went home, removed the forklift
and frame and placed them up for sale,” Luke
laughs.
Beer backloads
After the false start on the brick job, he
secured some work subcontracting to
Deegan’s Transport in Goulburn. Luke has a
lot of praise for Kim Deegan, who gave him a
go and showed him the ropes. “I was green as
green and knew nothing,” he confesses.
The early days for Southern Star Transport
were spent accommodating a wool boom
with Luke and his trusty Louisville carting
the baled fleece into the Yennora wool stores
in Sydney, and backloading beer from the
Tooheys’ factory in Lidcombe.
The work was hard, loading and tarping
bales, but to Luke it seemed greatly preferable
to the brick work.
“We would load the wool in Goulburn and
drive to Sydney and unload. That unloading
could take up to six-hours, then, when we
would go around to load the beer for the run
back, it could take just as long to load there.
“It was taking anything up to 20 hours to do
a return run from Goulburn to Sydney.”
Luke started carting bagged cement
products into Sydney from Maldon, around
the 2000 Olympics era, which saw steady
demand for these products. Unbeknown to
them at the time this work would eventually
see Southern Star Transport running two
semi-trailers consistently for many years.
As demand ebbed and flowed the work
fluctuated a bit but is still being done today by
Southern Star Transport with its 10-wheeler
DAF rigid.
It’s interesting to observe how seemingly
insignificant interactions over time can be
so pivotally instrumental in the evolution of
transport businesses.
While carrying out those Goulburn to
Sydney runs for Deegan’s, Luke would
regularly drive past the Australian Rail Track
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