Leeds Transport operates in some of the most remote parts of the country.

Note: This article is appearing out of sequence after a re-calculation halfway through the feature. Western Australia’s Leeds Transport now shares 24th place with Quilpie-based Bonsey’s Transport

WESTERN Australia’s Leeds Transport is a genuine family business, with three generations now working in the company.

Justin Leeds runs the operations with his brother Matt helping out, his daughter working in administration, his eldest son driving and his father John overseeing the workshop.

The Perth-based company was launched by John Leeds and his wife Pam with a single Dodge truck in 1972. Over the next 40 years they grew the company into taking out 16^th place in the 2013 top 25 livestock transporters feature.

Leeds Transport operates in some of the most remote corners of Australia, servicing cattle stations in an area primarily covering Kimberley, Pilbara, Gascoyne and Ashburton regions of Western Australia.

In any given week Leeds Transports’ eight prime movers can be found carting northern pastoral cattle to southern backgrounding operations, feedlots, saleyards and abattoirs and delivering cattle to ports across the north for the shipping trade.

The company has maintained a similar capacity to what it had in 2013, with one truck sold in that time. These days it runs a fleet of eight prime movers, with 31 trailers and total uplift capacity of 54 decks.

Leeds has the least prime movers of any company in the top 25 feature, on an account of a major innovation it made in the 1990s – with the design a seven-deck road train. The Leeds’ seven deck unit incorporates two 12.2m dog trailers hitched to a trailing B-double, effectively takes the form of two dog trailers and a B-Double.

The idea of the seven-deck unit came about when John and Justin Leeds were travelling west from a trip from Qld. Justin Leeds said there were a number of reasons to construct the road trains – including a need to shift a lot of cattle in a hurry.

“We also had in mind that it gave us ability to break the units down to meet the requirements of different jobs and numbers of cattle to move,” he said,

“That way if they came up short in a draft you could break it up accordingly and send the truck. And it gave us the ability to break each unit into smaller combinations when it came time to move cattle off backgrounding farms in the south.”

• To read more about Leeds seven deck road trains click here

Contact

Justin Leeds 0417 903 066