Livestock haulage firm to auction assets at as family calls it a day
Livestock transporters Richardson Bros will bring 30 years of serving central New South Wales and south-east Queensland to an end next week as the company’s last trucks and crates go to auction.
Owner Tony Richardson tells ATN it has been a family decision to wind up the company – saying that operating the business alongside the family’s Summerhill cattle company had been a heavy workload.
“The pressures that us bosses are under to try and maintain good staff – there are plenty of good people who have worked for me, and still do – but it is a tireless job,” Richardson says.
“You have got to be on it the whole time to make sure it runs like clockwork, and it doesn’t always because of breakdowns and all types of things…”
At its busiest, Richarson Bros reached 20 trucks with 15 sets of B-double crates, servicing feedlots, abattoirs and rural properties out of its Rutherford depot.
“I am a bit tired of the transport game,” Richardson says.
“It has been very good to me and my family but I have missed out of a fair bit of other stuff and for the next 10 years or so I want to go back on my farms.”
Having decided to keep some of the vehicles for Summerhill, Richardson will be selling the remaining six prime movers and eight sets of B-double stock crates at auction on May 17, at the Ritchie Bros Auctioneers yard in Yatala, Queensland.
“There is a fairly big demand for livestock crates at the moment, the cattle carting industry is very busy, so good timing, I hope,” Richardson says.
“There’s nothing too sad with moving forward, that’s the way I look at it, but yes – 30 years to build something up and it doesn’t take too long to get rid of it!”
Ritchie Bros. territory manager Adam Doyle says the trucks to be sold are late models and the stock crates were both custom-built and “extremely well maintained”.
“We’ve had an unprecedented level of interest in this gear because Tony’s name is so well regarded and he really looks after his assets,” Doyle says.
Five 2012-2015 T909 and T409 Kenworths and one 2015 Western Star 4900FXT are on the block, along with 15 trailers.