The heritage of Byrne Trailers is one that is very extensive and intertwined with the agricultural industry. The business, now one of transport’s most prominent trailer builders, was established on the back of Byrne Brothers Transport over 50 years ago.
In the early 1970s, brothers Laurence Michael (Mick) and Bill Byrne began their one-truck operation to start carting livestock in New South Wales. With a dream to make a difference, Mick and his other brother, Des, then went on to establish their own trailer building business (Byrne Trailers) in 1974.
Byrne Trailers manufactured its first four-deck crate trailer in 1979. After building a new workshop in Peak Hill the following year to replace the small shed it was operating out of, its first monocoque 4×2 utility trailer followed suit. These early developments would propel both Byrne businesses well into the future.
By 1984, Byrne Trailers was building its own monocoque livestock trailers while the business began to rapidly expand. A new factory opened in Wagga Wagga in 1988 and the business opened its third manufacturing plant in Toowoomba, Queensland, in 1993.
The entity of Byrne Trailers and its production scale has since grown tremendously.
“We build around 120 livestock trailers a year,” says Byrne Trailers Executive Manager and son of Mick, David Byrne. “Around 70 to 80 per cent of our production is livestock trailers and the rest is bulk trailers.”
Byrne Trailers has been at the forefront of the livestock industry ever since its inception. The business has revolutionised trailer manufacturing with designs such as cattle trailers which are made completely out of steel.
For over 40 years, Byrne Trailers has also been advocating for continuous innovation and improvement with the Australian Livestock and Rural Transporters Association (ALRTA).
“My dad was a founding committee member of the ALRTA in NSW, so he was part of the inauguration of it all,” David says. “He was still carting livestock and his big push behind forming an association was to change the rules of road transport, especially around heights, because he was building four-deck trailers but the height restrictions were still at 4.3 metres.
“That’s when we first became involved with the ALRTA. We became one of their sponsors in 1988 when we exited the transport industry as an operator, and we sponsored their very first conference in NSW that same year.”
Byrne Trailers now supports the ALRTA in any way that it can. As a full-time national platinum sponsor, this includes providing its members with valuable information and working with government bureaucrats on better designs for safer equipment and Performance-Based Standards (PBS) vehicles.
“If we don’t seek innovative ways and become more efficient in what we do, it will get to the point where overseas manufacturing could get us,” David says. “I’m pushing for a lot more innovation, but people have to embrace change.
“We have to be a part of what’s going to happen in the future and we need to get together as an industry to work these things out. There are opportunities now with bigger combinations going on the roads and greater access, but we’ve got to embrace technology and the places that we can go with it.
“The livestock industry is something that I want to be part of and lead from the front foot, and that’s why we support the ALRTA. We have to give back to the people in the industry because they’re the ones that feed us. We’re all in it together.”
The ALRTA has recently formed a PBS sub-committee to not only work on anomalies within the system but on trailer design with innovators such as Byrne Trailers going forward.