Owner/Driver #339

interview
RETRO RETURN
Jon Kelly went from having his own television program and a fleet
of flashy trucks to being forced to start over. The former Heavy
Haulage Australia boss chats with Ben Dillon on his current resto
projects and a new TV show
OWNER//DRIVER: LET’S REWIND nearly
10 years. You had your own TV show, a
fleet of flash trucks in your business
Heavy Haulage Australia (HHA), and
from the outside it looked like it was
good to be Jon Kelly. What happened?
Jon Kelly: At the end of the day a lot
of people forget that I did sell the
business (HHA). Unfortunately when
McAleese bought in they didn’t have
enough firepower to get through the
downturn in the economy and it took
out a lot of players in heavy haulage.
We needed additional equipment and
they had surplus capacity to assist us
so it was good fit in theory but I don’t
think anyone really saw the downturn
in the market coming in 2014-15. We
were the biggest privately owned heavy
haul company in the country, 80 per
cent of our revenue was contracted, so
we were different to a normal transport
company. We were the up-and-coming
new blood and I think they wanted
to reinvent their established product.
I thought that selling to a publically
listed company would be a safe bet and
I didn’t expect them to go down in the
process.
OD: The economic downturn didn’t help
but was it only that, or were there other
factors?
JK: The business got too big for me, like
I wasn’t a 120-truck operation, I wasn’t
a 200-300 staff kind of person, I’m a
20-30 truck kind of person where I can
run it all myself, it was just wearing me
out. I look back on it and what I did was
superhuman, I can’t imagine putting
Opposite: Jon Kelly
Top: The Cruiser and Mack share the company
colours, leaving Jon a choice of big or bigger
Left: This Kenworth C509 may be one of the trucks
that makes it onto the new show
30 APRIL 2021 ownerdriver.com.au