Dave Schuppan manages four trucks while travelling more than 4,000km each week.
Dave Schuppan has been pulling trailers for Border Express for 29 years and appreciates the consistency of the work.
“They’ve been good to us,” Dave says.
“We’ve got set trips. We’ve got set rates. We get fuel at a cheaper rate, buying it through Border Express. And they help us with our insurances. They’re so big they can do that for us.”
Border Express had only been operating for five years when Dave and his father Geoff Schuppan joined the team as subcontractors in 1986.
“When we started they had 19 trailers. They were a local company. It suited us right down to the ground being in Albury. And they’re family owned,” he says.
“A lot of blokes are still there who were there when I started.”
Geoff, who passed away in 2013, finished his career in the Border Express workshop. Dave considers it a great compliment when people tell him he looks like his late father.
“He was a legend in my eyes. He taught me everything I know. He was a great person,” he says.
Consistent work has enabled Dave to increase his fleet and regularly update. Today he has four Cummins-powered Kenworths.
Dave drives a T909. Ross Roberts and Peter Eames drive his two K200s and Nick ‘Sparra’ Weygood drives his K108. One of the K200s is used to subcontract for Lieschke Transport of Jindera, New South Wales.
Dave’s home is 150m off the Hume Highway at Lara Lakes near Table Top, NSW.
He calls in at his house to have tea and a rest every day.
And he can leave the trailers at the nearby Norske Skog paper mill where most of his journeys begin and end.
You can read the full story on Dave Schuppan in the November issue of Owner//Driver.
Photography: Tamara Whitsed