My apologies everyone, this story has been a long time coming. Years actually. I am pretty sure it was either 2020 or 2021 when I first met the lovely young Jessica at the Dane Ballinger Memorial Truck Show in Bathurst. I was absolutely captivated when circling the truck show and saw this beautiful little thing sitting down near the back of the show – the sun beaming down on it like a supersized spotlight. I was just drawn in.
As a photographer, I broke out the camera immediately, super keen to capture such beauty, with a heavenly glow to highlight the shot. Just when I was about to snap the perfect shot, Jessica Baker walked around the corner and ruined my shot. I couldn’t complain though – it was her little UD freight truck I was trying to photograph. Not that I knew it at the time, but Jessica was also walking around the truck admiring it, hence I figured she was just a fellow enthusiast like me, so I waited for her to move on so I could snap my shots. She proceeded to get into the little UD, and it all made sense. She was a truck lover like me and she was admiring how cool and colourful the UD was; however, she was doing it as the owner. I had to introduce myself and see if she would be interested in a story.
Four years later, here we are, finally getting to share Jessica’s story. Due mainly to my procrastination, it is a very different story to the one I would have told back in 2021. Back then young, Jessica was a one woman, one truck operation. In 2025, it is now a one woman, one partner and four truck operation. The origin story will be the same, but the progression of All Go Express has added three more trucks and a lot more work to Jessica’s expanding fleet.
Jessica Baker is a born and bred truckie. She grew up surrounded by trucks and with a toy cabinet devoid of Barbie dolls and devoted to all things trucking. Her parents were at the head of the table of their own family transport company, under the banner that Jessica would later use as All Go Express. The family-owned business had one B-double, a trio of semis, a handful of rigids and about 60 contractors. Due to the sensitive nature of All Go Express’s contracts, the family’s trucks were kept very plain, very non-descript and without any signage.
What mum and dad carted was not of importance to Jessica as a kid. She just loved everything trucking.
“I used to love finishing school and going with dad, because most of his freight was transported at night,” Jessica says.
“I’d go to the warehouse and help him load trucks or wrap pallets or label stuff, I just loved that side of it.”
School was not her favoured vocation – she endured it – but working and following in mum and dad’s footsteps was where her heart lay.
“I went in a truck when I was like three months old,” she laughs as she tries to put a finger on when her passion first became evident.
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“It was either three or six months, I have a photo somewhere.”
Whatever the age, that passion was flamed through her teenage years and into young adulthood. Even getting her driver’s licence while at high school became a trucking experience.
“With dad being in trucking when we did our Learners, that’s me and my brother and sister, we did it all in a three-tonne Mitsubishi Canter,” Jessica says.
“That’s how I learnt to drive, in a little Canter. Dad said it would be better for us because you sit up higher and have a better view, so that’s how I learnt to drive.”
It was after Jessica gained her licence that school became just a constraint of her day. She would turn up and do the work, but after school Jessica was already in the process of building her future.
“I took out a loan to buy a Sprinter van and I was contracting to mum and dad on the weekends and in school holidays,” she recalls.
“I also picked up some work delivering flowers as well, so I ran under Elegance by Jessica.”
That after-school job became the stepping stone for Jessica. The Sprinter van went from a weekend worker to a full-time gig for the young lady, and she was loving it. She continued to contract to All Go Express and continued to grow her own client list as well. It soon got to the point where the little Mercedes-Benz van couldn’t hold it all in and Jessica had to start re-evaluating her options.
“I really liked the idea of being my own boss, and loved the driving, so my dad convinced me to buy a truck and go bigger,” she says.
“I got a loan and went looking for the perfect truck and I found the UD, which had 100,000km on it, but was in great condition and I bought it.”
When Jessica purchased the UD, her company was still running under Elegance by Jessica. Her parents had the All Go Express banner with their company, as they had for 25 years. Jessica continued contracting to them and picking up a little work of her own on the side.
Then everything changed; after decades in the transport game, Jessica’s parents decided to pull up stumps and enjoy some time off. It was a well-earned retirement for Carmen and Warwick, but it could’ve been a major hurdle for Jessica. While she had built a small list of private clients, the majority of her work was still with the All Go Express contract.
The young lady didn’t let it phase her. She was never shy of doing work, and when needed she showed she was never shy of chasing it either. Soon enough, she had found more contract work for her little UD, although this time not under her Elegance by Jessica business name. Instead, as a tribute to the history her parents had forged, Jessica took over the All Go Express name and reimagined her little UD as a moving memorial to her parents’ company, complete with Aussie flag artwork over her little workhorse.
“I got a little bit scared when mum and dad got out, because I had a loan over my head and now I was having to go out on my own and find more work,” she says.
“But I just carried on and found something else.”
That work initially came from Minto Based RevTrans, who had Jessica doing a lot of local Sydney work. The Revtrans work soon gave way to work with Komatsu, carting parts to mines all around New South Wales.
“The Komatsu work was very different, mainly very heavy, with solid sprockets and things to various mines,” she recalls.
“When I was doing the flowers and pharmaceuticals it was all really light, now all of a sudden it was extremely heavy.”
The Komatsu work really was the lead-in to where Jessica is now. At the time, the Komatsu deal meant she was unable to cart any other freight out of Sydney. This was fine – she would head north-west out of Sydney, covering mines as far up as Mudgee. Jessica built solid relationships with many of the businesses on those routes and was soon getting work coming back to Sydney as well. By the time the Komatsu work finished upl Jessica had massive support from businesses in the Mudgee, Dubbo and Bathurst areas and her little UD was running flat out every day.
It seems many businesses were loving the personal touch and friendly personality that Jessica hit the road with every day. Her love of trucking and enjoyment of being her own boss shone through with her service and this, in turn, was reflected in the work she was picking up.
The downside of a strong work ethic and happy customers, paired with one small UD to do all the work, is that eventually it becomes too much. This led to the expansion of the fleet. As you will pick up in the photos, there are now four trucks in the All Go Express fleet, the ‘OG’ being Jessica’s UD. It’s still the busiest of the fleet, however, now Jessica also has her 5800 Western Star truck and dog to help.
“I bought the 5800 because it was a really good set up,” she says.
“The truck would allow me to get the heavier stuff I wasn’t able to get on the UD and, if it was really busy, I would have the dog trailer to load up as well.”
She was also quick to point out that her tarping and tie-down knowledge was extremely limited when she purchased the flat top set up.
“I had never dealt with tarps or anything and wasn’t going to until a guy saw my set-up and asked if I could cart some hay for him,” she says.
As is the young lady’s mentality, Jessica didn’t hesitate to increase her skills resume. She went and bought a set of tarps and proceeded to learn all she could about loading and tarping flat tops. As for the Western Star itself, it’s now her favourite truck to drive, as it has a CAT in it too that she loves.
Her latest acquisition is another Western Star, this time a flat roof 4900 with a C15 underneath.
“We picked up some work that will require a drop deck and, at the moment, we kind of have the horse without the cart,” she says.
“I saw the Star for sale – I love flat roofs and I love CAT motors – so we grabbed it.”
You will notice I have moved to ‘we’ now rather than ‘I’. That is because Jessica’s partner Michael is a big part of the company these days. If he isn’t covered in grease and oil servicing one of the trucks, he is most likely behind the wheel of one helping to get all the work covered. Jessica has come a long way from weekends in a Sprinter van – she now has multiple vehicles and dozens of loyal clients that support her due in large part to the enthusiasm she has for her craft and industry.
I could rabbit on about her drive and passion, however I think it is best summed up by focusing on the final vehicle in the fleet photo, the one we haven’t talked about yet in the Kenworth K123 with its whopping great Texas bumper.
“Honestly, I bought that because it just looked cool,” she admits.
“I tell people it’s a project truck, which it is, but I saw it sitting in a paddock doing nothing and I love flat roofs. Then I saw it had a CAT in it and I just wanted it, simple as that, it’s a cool truck. I’ll use it for hay runs or something, but I just loved it, so I bought it.”
It is that passion for trucking that has seen Jessica shine and thrive. The pride she had in her UD that first time I met her has never diminished. She loves her trucks and loves her job, and that is inspiring. She is not afraid of work – the fact that she’s put nearly three-quarters of a million kilometres on her UD shows that. I’ll leave the final word to her.
“I love trucks, and it’s not a matter of if you are male or female, if you love trucks anyone can do it. It’s a great industry to be part of,” she says.
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