Owner/Driver #339

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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
Photos by Ben Dillon ownerdriver.com.au APRIL 2021 31
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Owner/Driver #339

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