Oakey’s Johnston Bros transport took delviery of its first Rytrans B-triple trailers in November. Image: Lime Light Photography.

A TOOWOOMBA livestock trailer servicing and repair business has recently branched out into manufacture of new stock transport trailers, with the firm’s first B-triples rolling off the production line and being handed over to the new owner.

Oakey-based Johnston’s Livestock Transport took delivery of its first new B-triples from local manufacturer Rytrans in November.

The Rytrans business previously focussed on trailer servicing, maintenance and repair, but has developed its own trailers with innovative design features and attention to detail in the manufacturing process.

The 90 feet of carefully constructed, state-of-the-art trailers shows the quality being produced in South-East Queensland and adds to an expanding local agricultural support sector.

Managing director of Rytrans, Ashley Daley, said he and the team at Rytrans were excited about venturing into manufacturing in a booming agricultural sector within the Toowoomba area. His decades of experience through Arrabury Pastoral Co’s operations has provided an invaluable background to the trailer project in the design and construction phase.

“Driver safety and animal welfare are at the forefront of our designs,” he said.

The new Rytrans trailers include anti-bruising features for the protection of animals, anti-rust improvements including stainless steel flooring, and additional safety and ease-of-operation features for drivers including safety gates.

Managing director of Johnston’s Livestock Transport, George Johnston, said he was impressed by the standard of the product coming out of the local family-run business.

He has added B-triple trailer configurations to the Johnston Brothers fleet as a way of making some livestock transport assignments more efficient.  In a job needing to move nine decks of cattle, for example, this would normally require three B-doubles, however with the new B-triple it means only two trucks are required. This result in increased productivity and efficiency, less wear on tyres and increased fuel efficiency – not to mention wear and tear on roads due to less traffic.

Johnston Brothers will be using the new B-triple trailers to cart mostly premium Wagyu cattle within Queensland, as the trailers meets stringent state requirements and regulations.

“The team at Rytrans has done a few repairs for me in the past and I was really happy with the work they did,” he said. “Given that track record, I thought it would be great to see what they could do building something from scratch,” he said.

“Rytrans’s attention to detail and quality of build is impeccable, down to small design features that make a big impact. One feature is that 90-degree corners are now at 45-degree angles which helps to avoid animal effluent build up, which previously over time would create rust issues resulting in early repair and eventual replacement,” he said.

See Beef Central’s Top 25 Livestock Transporters feature, click here.