etruck.com.au

I have spent the day esconced in the bowels of the Minter Ellison building in Canberra. It’s the twentieth anniversary of the ATA coming up and I am researching a history of the organisation, going through their archives at their HQ.

Looking back twenty years and trying to put yourself in that era can be difficult. However, I found something to transport me back to those days when I got to some simple visitors books taken by the founders on one of their ‘Forum on the Road’ tours when they were drumming up interest in the idea of a single national peak body for the transport industry.

Reading the books took me right back to those days when the trucking industry was seen as dangerous and irresponsible. Reading the signatures of those attending the small meetings all around Australia helped me to visualize the fear and uncertainty prevalent at the time.

I kept finding the names of people I know in the trucking game, looking at how they signed themselves in. I had to visualise them with more hair or without grey hair to get the picture but it all came back to me as I read the names.

I was struck by how much trucking has changed in twenty years, how our own perception of what we do is transformed. The culture those signing the book, as they walked in to hear the RTIF founders speak, lived in is unknown in modern trucking, those days have long gone, thank god!