For so many transport companies, family and business intersect at a multitude of levels. There are countless organisations looking to make a living on Australia’s roads, but some of the most successful are family owned and family run – and have been for generations.
Followmont Transport is a staple of Queensland’s road transport landscape, and under the guidance of former CEO Mark Tobin it has expanded down Australia’s east coast to become a fixture of a constantly evolving sector.
Former CEO Mark has only recently handed the role over to Ross Longmire towards the closing stages of 2024 but has stayed on in a more strategic role of Managing Director where he will focus more firmly on the future of the business his father started over forty years ago.
Mark, however, is not the only Tobin currently helping pave the way forward for Followmont. His younger brother, Ben, is the General Manager of Queensland and started working at the company in 2011 – the same year Mark took on the role of CEO.
Those family values held by Mark and Ben, going back to their father and co-founder of Followmont Bernard, are evident in the way the company is run, and although Longmire is the company’s new CEO, the organisation is still strongly driven by the values and lessons instilled in Mark and Ben by Bernard.
It is still a family business that is operating on family values, and while so many businesses become the victim of family squabbling or poorly conceived succession plans, Mark Tobin told ATN why Followmont has not just survived but thrived over the past forty years.
“We have a family charter that we stick with,” Mark said about his relationship with his brother. “We’re very closely aligned in what we do.
“We’re 100 per cent aligned and support each other at any time of what we have to do with each other.
“We’ve worked really hard and that came from our father’s values and that’s what makes this business so special. We’re aligned, we respect each other’s roles and who we are, and nothing gets in front of our relationship.
“Our family charter comes before the businesses. We might have a family business, but the business isn’t about the family. The family comes first.
“It works because we always have open communication. We’re best mates, and we put our family values first.”
Since Tobin took the reins at Followmont, the company has embarked on a strategic expansion out of Queensland and down the east coast of Australia.
From initially delivering magazines out of a small office in Brisbane in 1984, the company has now boomed to contain over 24 company-owned depots and over 1000 pieces of equipment, with over 1000 staff across its sites.
Key to the company’s values, though, is its servicing of regional areas. Followmont does not just operate in the regions around major metropolitan hubs, but it is entrenched in regional communities as far north as Cairns, and as far west as Mount Isa, with regional hubs serviced in regions all the way to Sydney.
A logical next step could be setting up shop in Victoria and becoming a genuine east coast powerhouse of the Australian transport landscape, but Tobin says there is absolutely no rush to grow for the sake of growth and, once again, it all comes back to family values.
“Whether it’s Victoria, whether it’s 3PL, it doesn’t matter what it is, our goal is to make sure we’ve got the right capability in the boardroom so we can extend our business wherever we want to suit our business and our model.
“We’ve got a clear strategy, and that clear strategy is documented in everything from our family charter to our shareholders agreement, to our divisional strategies – it all leads back to the top.
“The legacy change between myself and Bernie, I have the highest amount of respect for him.
“Ben and I have it all sorted out so that there is no way anything could have any influence on our relationship or the business.
“I think the connection to it is living those values. Our father had massive respect in the business, and we still drive and use that, and we don’t take it for granted.
“It’s virtually three generations if you go from Bernard himself to me to Ben.
“People say every second or third generation destroys a family. We have zero tolerance for that.”
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