Like many in Australia’s illustrious road transport industry, James Gilbert grew up around trucks. The familiar smell of diesel, the grime and the exhaust. With a father who loved trucks and built a career around running them around the country, James was never going to stray far from the profession.
“I’ve been in transport my entire life,” he told OwnerDriver.
“My Dad owned Gilbert’s Transport Queensland and owned cattle trucks, molasses tankers and grain tippers, so I grew up around a variety of trucks.”
Despite this close connection, James didn’t allow nepotism to define his rise in the industry. Instead, he went about it his own way, starting as a diesel mechanic by trade.
After finishing his apprenticeship at Mack Trucks’ Brisbane site, James looked to find his feet in the sector. When he met his business partner Matt Gardner, the pair decided roughly a decade ago to take the opportunity to go out on their own and, as James puts it, start their “own show” – Darling Downs Haulage.
“Matt has been driving trucks for years, so we decided to do our own thing when we took over a fleet of trucks from a cousin of ours at Ezyquip Hire,” James explains.
“We started off moving earthmoving equipment all over Australia for them with floats and road trains, and it’s grown from there.”
James is underselling himself. The pair started like all humble owner operators do – with a single truck and plenty of hope. For the first year, James and Matt hired three trucks and equipment from Ezyquip. As James says, the banks “weren’t particularly keen on two young fellas wanting to start a business”. So, the loan allowed them to run with one truck and a float. Fast-forward a year and the Darling Downs Haulage team had four trucks in its fleet that it had bought out from Ezyquip and one new Mack Super-Liner.
“Ever so slowly we have grown from that stage nearly 10 years ago to the point that we once had 13 trucks before we backed it off a little to 12, running an all Kenworth fleet,” James says.
Despite these humble beginnings, Darling Downs Haulage is now anything but uniform. Its fleet boasts an array of prime movers, floats, road trains, molasses tankers and grain tippers (including flat tops, step deck extendables and a super tilt). While it echoes some of the services that his family used to run, James says he’s only briefly used his father’s experience over the years to source certain contracts and jobs.
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“Between Matt and I, we’ve expanded the business into a fleet of tankers carting molasses and liquid all over the eastern seaboard of Australia,” he says.
“We cart molasses from Townsville, Mackay and into the Downs where we reside. We then cart supplement from Bundaberg all the way into the top end of Victoria and over into South Australia.”
Throughout this time of expansion, the Darling Downs Haulage pair could’ve been forgiven for keeping it simple. However, James and Matt don’t do things simply, so they decided to also get back into grain tipper work while they were at it alongside dabbling in heavy haulage and general freight work.
If that wasn’t enough, the operation then found another avenue to grow into when natural disaster saw Darling Downs Haulage come to the rescue with its fleet of trucks.
“When floods started to hit the Lismore region hard back in 2022, we got involved in carting modular huts for Hutchinson Builders (Australia’s largest privately owned construction company),” James explains.
“In roughly four years, we’ve forged a good relationship with Hutchies and now every year we cart a fair few modular huts around Australia for them, fulfilling some government jobs for a range of housing commissions, schools and hospitals.”
A “fair few” is quite the understatement – in 2024 the operator transported around 90 modular huts in one job to the Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia’s Kimberley region to help build a remote community school.
To put it into perspective, this is just one facet of Darling Downs Haulage’s increasingly diversified capabilities. When the Fitzroy Crossing project first began in 2024, James and Matt had teams of subbies taking 10 trucks each fortnight from Toowoomba, while 10 trucks a day were travelling to the Lismore and Ballina project in 2022 when the operator lent a hand to move between 700 and 800 huts into the region for flood relief.
While these modular huts projects can quickly take plenty of attention, work and trucks, James says currently molasses tankers remain the business’ largest and most popular service.
“It all makes for rewarding work, particularly when we are now involved in flood relief tasks and modular hut carting for community projects,” he says.
“The key to our business is being diverse. We aim to pretty much do a bit of everything with our fleet of 12 trucks. It’s about being in the right place at the right time and doing the right things to help us grow.”
James is quick to add that a critical part of Darling Downs Haulage’s growth can be attributed to the quality equipment it uses. Hendrickson, much like trucks, has been a constant in his life. At Gilbert’s Transport Queensland, the operator ran a fleet of Macks that ran on Hendrickson suspensions. Years later, James has continued this family tradition, with a variety of Hendrickson systems proving critical to the daily running of Darling Downs Haulage’s equipment.
“I’ve had a lot to do with Hendrickson over the years, especially since I was a mechanic,” he says.
“I like the product a lot – we run it underneath roughly half of our fleet, starting with the Hendrickson PRIMAAX EX product on our prime movers to the latest HXL7 wheel ends on our trailers.”
James says there are some standout combinations worth mentioning in the fleet, particularly one of the operator’s grain tippers featuring Hendrickson suspension. While some of the earlier trailers to enter the fleet run on the older HXL5 wheel ends, James says the team has welcomed the introduction of the HXL7 product with INTRAAX’s locally optimised air suspension to provide a great total cost of ownership.
“We’ve had no issues with Hendrickson and have appreciated welcoming new technology,” James says.
“Wayne McPhail, Hendrickson’s Queensland business development manager, has also provided incredible support.”
While it’s only taken Darling Downs Haulage a decade to grow to where it currently is, James has no intention of continuing to increase the fleet. Instead, his focus is on ensuring the transport operation can remain as diverse as possible and allow him to add to his lifetime of memories in the local road transport industry.
“We’ve grown at quite a substantial pace in a short period of time, so we want to maintain what we have, depending on the numerous projects that may come our way,” he says.
“You never know what the sector may throw at you, but we’re confident we’re ready for anything.”
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