‘Good things come to those who wait’ – whether you remember this proverb from the 19th century French poet who is credited with its origin, or you remember it from the cheesy Guinness Beer ad that encouraged patience when pouring the perfect stout, either way it is a very traditional old proverb. One that we often tell ourselves when we are digging in to get the job done.
These days, however, there is a variation to that proverb, a variation I personally am a much bigger fan of and one that rang true for me when I popped out to the small country town of Pittsworth to check out the thriving family run company that, in just a couple of years, has snowballed into a major player in a heavy vehicle maintenance and fit out arena. Pittsworth Fleet Maintenance, owned and operated by Mark and Jayde Holt, has been built on the back of the variation of that old French lady proverb.
‘Good things come to those that get off their butts and earn it.’
I could add in a couple of other cliché quotes that also bear significance, like Aristotle’s ‘quality is not an act, it is a habit’ or the old Chinese proverb ‘if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing well’, as these mantras have played a vital role in the success that the young couple have had. However, I don’t want to take away from the leading cause of Pittsworth Fleet Maintenance’s success. Hard work.
Hence that is the one thing I want to focus on with this story. Hard work. Okay, maybe hard work and quality work – so, two things. Actually, I guess you have to include drive as well. Hard work, motivated movement and quality. But then Pittsworth Fleet Maintenance has also succeeded because of the customer service and the hard-working employees as well. So now we are at hard work, motivated movement, customer service and a great team. Now even I have lost my train of thought. Let’s just focus on the man behind the tools and driving this company in Mark Holt.
I first met Mark several years ago. At the time he was running the workshop for Broadbent’s Transport in Toowoomba and our paths crossed as he was a vital cog in the restoration and rebuild of the iconic ‘Plugger’ Bowden’s Mack Super-Liner. We shall touch on that soon, but let’s get into Mark’s pedigree first.
The necessary starting location is down in Albury on the family farm where Mark grew up with his siblings.
“Mum and Dad were the ones that instilled the working habits into us – they were very old fashioned when it came to hard work, respect and dedication,” Mark says proudly.
It was the long days fencing and looking after cattle that truly ingrained a work ethic in the young man. I am not going to spin tales about his schooling, however, I won’t try and tell you he was a dedicated learner, polite to his teachers and respectful of the school environment. In fact, he was bolting out the school hallways before the year 10 lunch bell finished ringing, starting an agricultural apprenticeship at the age of 16. It was a much more favourable vocation than schoolroom learning for Mark.
I wish I could tell you Mark’s venture on to the tools at that age was the calling that centred him, but I would be sugar coating it a bit if I did.
“I did two years on that apprenticeship, then went off the rails a bit,” he admits.
It wasn’t until he reeled himself in and transferred his apprenticeship to heavy vehicles with a job at Ag-Spread that Mark learnt about work ethic and pride in the job. It’s fair to say that place sowed the seeds for Mark’s approach to everything now.
“I loved it there, they really taught me how to work,” Mark says.
“Jeff Delany was the best worker I’ve ever seen. It was a great start – they taught me how to do everything.”
That’s not hyperbole either. Ag-Spread had upwards of 60 trucks, located throughout the eastern side of Australia. Dubbo, Newcastle, Brisbane, Mackay. There were Ag-Spread trucks everywhere and it was Mark’s job to help service them.
“I had no commitments and just worked. We’d pack up an A-trailer tautliner with water pods, compressors and stuff. Then the B-trailer we’d load with tyres, filters, parts, everything else,” he says.
“We hooked up an old Argosy to it and me and the boss would just travel everywhere servicing trucks and trailers. Hexham Shell, Dubbo GrainCorp, Brisbane Port, we’d just work wherever. It was great experience, it really taught me how to work and they were good on their servicing, so I learnt to do the job well.”
I won’t drag out Mark’s entire resume. It’s suffice to say that Mark’s apprenticeship wasn’t signed off underneath the tippers of an Ag-Spread setup, but instead in the back blocks of Kalgoorlie, where he was working for Bis Industries. Mark had followed one of his brothers across the paddock to the thriving metropolis of Super Pit country.
He completed his apprenticeship and grew his skill level to the point that by the time he left Kalgoorlie he had the role of workshop manager. More importantly though, he managed to meet the love of his life in Jayde.
The couple enjoyed life in Western Australia. Mark by now was managing the workshop for Rocky’s Own and had even been mastering the art of refurbing and rebuilding trailers. Then, in 2014, the couple decided to move back across to the east, opting to settle in Toowoomba where Mark had picked up a workshop job with Wagners Transport.
Between Wagners in 2014 and starting Pittsworth Fleet Maintenance in 2022, there were several other vocations, each adding skills and knowledge to Mark’s repertoire. Flex Industries, funnily enough a Kalgoorlie based company that had ventured east, provided an opportunity with the opening of their branch. It opened the door to a fresh challenge and increased experience for the ever hungry to learn Mark.
“We operated for years out of the Incitec Pivot shed just up the road here,” he says.
“It was great learning new stuff, we were overhauling all the Incitec road tankers, sending them out new again. I was also managing more people; we had a team of four or five and I learnt a lot about dealing with people.”
From there, Mark ended up managing the Broadbent’s workshop and subsequently became involved in his first full restoration and rebuild project in Bowden’s 1988 Mack Super-Liner. While Mark admits he had experience refurbing trailers and tidying up some rather worn-out old rigs, the Bowdens Mack was his first real rebuild project and would be a bit of an ignition point for what would become Pittsworth Fleet Maintenance.
“I had started refurbing in Kalgoorlie, that got me into it. At Flex we were making trailers look new again, but it was when we undertook the full rebuild on ROO500 that sort of opened up things,” Mark says.
“I found I really loved the challenge of it, even just doing little bits. If somebody could do something then I could do it, and I would do it the best I could.”
To scratch that new itch, Mark took on a job at Pitstop, once again managing and working.
“Everywhere I have managed a workshop I always work as well. I like to be on the floor, doing the job with the others,” Mark says.
The plus side of his new job was working out on the Farmhaul sheds and now being involved in the fit outs of their new trucks.
“Farmhaul was buying 10 to 12 trucks a year, and I said I wanted to do the fit outs. It was fairly basic, just guards, lights, a couple of fridges, that kind of thing,” he says.
“As we did those, we started getting other people wanting to send trucks out.”
It was about this stage that Mark and Jayde started seriously talking about starting their own shop. Mark had finished at Pittstop and was keen for a new challenge.
“I always told him he should go out on his own,” Jayde says.
“He likes things done properly, in particular ways. He has always been firm on the level of work.”
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It is also worth noting here that while Mark had been working long hours, managing servicing, repairing and rebuilding, as well as being a good husband and father, he somehow had also managed to squeeze in time for upskilling himself.
“When I was at Pitstop I had two trades, the agricultural and road transport. I had done air conditioning as well,” he says.
“Over the two years I was there though I also did six more RPL courses – I became an approved examiner for road worthies, an approved person to do roadworthies and measure-ups for the Queensland government. I did an auto electrical, advanced diploma in mechanical engineering and Cert IV in mechanical engineering. There was a lot of onsite and online learning, work evidence, all that stuff.”
Even just listening to the achievements and efforts Mark had put in, I felt very under accomplished. Seriously though, I’d done well finishing three books and two PS5 games on top of my workload over a two-year period.
All this meant that in 2022, when Mark and Jayde decided to start their own company, there would be no doubt about its success, it was just the speed at which it has grown that even stuns this humble young couple.
“When we first started, we had to borrow some money from my mum,” Mark admits.
“We had nothing, we only had one car and the tools I already had. We had to hire a ute, we leased a shed down the road here and the rest of the money I used to buy more tools. Jack stands, sockets, all the stuff I would need just to go and do the work people needed.”
While now the company is as much about fit outs and custom builds, the origin story for Pittsworth Fleet Maintenance is exactly as its title proclaims – fleet maintenance.
Mark was working eight days a week, 25 hours a day, travelling around doing maintenance and repairs for several local companies. The support he received from so many of the local fleet operators, both large and small, was what enabled him to succeed. That and the ‘good things come to those that work their butts off’ attitude that was drilled into Mark.
Within three months, Mark had not only paid his mum back but also taken on a worker to assist him. Within six months everything had basically doubled – workload and workforce. Mark was still travelling to look after his customers, but now work was literally lined up at the door as well.
The little three truck shed he leased was already too small and things were starting to move into fit outs as well.
“The maintenance was the main thing, our first fit out came from Pengelly’s who gave us a chance. By the end of 2022, Brown & Hurley gave us a break as well,” Mark says.
“At the start we were subbying work out to a few local engineering places for the fit outs, helping us design and build wraps and cutting.”
Within a year and a half, the reputation PFM had built saw the company pricing out and designing a custom shed for their rapidly expanding operation. In 2024, just two years after gambling on themselves and taking the leap, Mark and Jayde, as well as their 20-odd staff, moved into a purpose-built state of the art shed, with a full-length pit, fabrication areas as well as fit out bays, wash bay, paint shop and a backyard stacked to the brim with projects on order. Add in all the new equipment and what started out as a one man mobile mechanic can now do everything in-house from wheel alignments and tyre servicing to auto electrical and air-conditioning. They have the set up for interior designs OBM and IAP products, and of course there’s still the repairs and servicing.
It’s not just the servicing for his customers though – Mark and Jayde put a massive emphasis on their staff. They employ a lot of young fellas without trades and offer them the pathway to as many as six different apprenticeships.
“When I started out, I wanted to build an operation that could do it all, and with a team who love where they work. That’s what we have now, you can come here for everything,” he says.
“Fit outs, tele-tracking, scales and scale calibration, everything. We can build fit and service it all.
“When it comes to designing and fitting out trucks, we have an advantage in that we also service them. So, we get to see what bends, flexes, what will work and what will break. So, when we build custom trucks, we know that and that helps a lot.”
Now that I have spent a bit of time explaining what Mark and the Pittsworth Fleet Maintenance team can do, I want to wrap it all together by focusing on why this young couple has been so successful. It has been mentioned before but I will reiterate. Hard work– it’s the call of our industry as a whole, and it is what has seen Mark and Jayde thrive.
If you happen to be out in Pittsworth on a weekend, there is only one place you will find open, PFM. And you will find Mark swamped in tools, servicing one of his long-running clients, or finishing off a truck ready for delivery. It’s not just about providing for his family; it is about pride in his work and pride in the product for Mark.
Thankfully that ethos has flowed throughout the workshop and the entire team hold themselves to the same standard (though maybe not the same hours Mark does). The team is something Mark spent a lot of time talking about. Mark recognises that without them, from the office to the wash bay, PFM wouldn’t be as successful as it is, and he points out the advantages of ensuring they have the best environment to work in.
“We have been really privileged to have the support of some great people. Transport companies like Ambrose Haulage, R&K, HBH, McVeigh’s and Darcy Transport that gave us a chance and the likes of Brown & Hurley that trust us with their customers as well,” he says.
“We love creating a good product, giving them good support and helping our customers. I am very proud of the stuff we do and ensuring everyone here has a job they are happy to come to.”
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