The Brown and Hurley Group founder and Australian icon has passed, aged 94
The Australian trucking industry is mourning the loss of Alan Brown OAM, joint founder of The Brown and Hurley Group, who passed at the Hope Island Arcare nursing home after a short illness.
Aged 94, Brown has been remembered as not only an icon of the industry but also a legend of Kyogle, the birthplace of his trucking company.
Alan’s son, and joint managing director of The Brown and Hurley Group, Rob Brown says his father “was very gifted mechanically; he could fix pretty much anything and took great pride in making things, like furniture and even solar heating systems.”
“As the Brown and Hurley business has grown over the years, Alan would still describe himself as ‘just a motor mechanic’.”
Alan’s history in Australia’s trucking sphere began as a 14-year-old when he started an apprenticeship at Balmain Bros, Cooma.
Joining the Army in 1942 as a mechanical instructor, Brown met Jack Hurley and began the life-long partnership that is now in the hands of his son.
The time also saw the coupling of Brown and Lil, who went on to have five children together and a marriage that lasted until 2013, when Lil passed.
The working relationship between Brown and Hurley began in earnest after the war came to a close and their time in the Army finished in 1946.
The beginning of the trucking company, which currently has nine branches across the eastern seaboard of Australia, took place at a small garage in Kyogle.
Rob Brown says from those early stages his father held onto the company’s ethos of ‘principles before profit’.
“One of Alan’s favourite sayings was, ‘I complained I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet’” Rob says.
The funeral service for Alan Brown will be held at St James Anglican Church, Kyogle on Friday 4th March at 2.00pm.