LONG time Portland locals Leigh and Barb Allen have said goodbye to their freight business after almost 40 years of serving the local community and beyond.

According to Mr Allen, Allens Freight got started back in 1985 when he purchased what was at the time the Warrnambool paper truck.

“That used to run the pretty much all the newspapers from Warrnambool to Portland,” he said.

“That was all night shift, got started at midnight to pick up a bit of freight, and we’d pick up the papers at about 4am and get them here by 6.

“The schedule was pretty tight, the newsagents were pretty keen back in those days, if you got in late, you could have 50 or 60 blokes hanging around waiting for their papers before they went out to Alcoa.”

Mr Allen explained that they also used to pick up freight which had come from Melbourne to Warrnambool for it to then be distributed in Portland.

 “In the early days we did that all with one truck, and eventually we started doing a second run during the day to pick up the Herald Sun,” he said.

“They’d pick up the papers at about 3pm and get back at 4-5pm… once again if ever the paper’s late people tended to get upset about that.

“Of course, back in those days there was no social media so everyone was relying on you to bring them the paper so they would know what was going on in the world.”

Further down the line, Allen explained that at the tender age of 36 he suffered a heart attack.

“I never really had a day off in those early days, the night shift was Monday to Saturday work, and outside of that we used to do work picking up parcels and freight around town,” he said.

“I had the heart attack fighting a fire over in Narrawong, went straight over to Warrnambool and then on to Epworth hospital.

“I had to have four bypasses due to the smoke inhalation from the fire, that was a really stressful time to work through.

“Obviously the paper runs had to keep going while I was away, we had Theo Domburg step in for a while and do the runs.”

Growth

Today, Allens Freight operates out of five depots within south west Victoria, with 60 vehicles on hand and about 100 staff, clearly much has changed since those early days of running one truck between Warrnambool and Portland every night.

Mr Allen said the first noticeable change was that he “learned how to use spreadsheets” which made his paperwork much quicker and more efficient.

“With spreadsheets it makes it a lot easier to apply for all sorts of jobs, which is what we started doing,” he said.

“We started doing parcel deliveries for Australia Post around Portland… Barb used to do a lot of those with the kids Richard and Megan, she knew all the quickest routes.

“When he was about eight, Richard used to take time off school to take people with him to do the Herald run because he knew the keys and where to pick the paper up and deliver the papers, but he obviously couldn’t drive.”

Mr Allen went on to explain that the business used to ship anything and everything they could get their hands on, to the point years later where he realised the business had outgrown Portland.

“In those days, and perhaps it’s still true today, in order to survive you had to get bigger,” he said.

“We set up a depot in Warrnambool, Richard took over the management of that, we used to operate out of the railway shed there.

“That worked well for a while, but again you get to the stage where you outgrow everything, and you need to get bigger again.

“So, we built our own depot over there, which was brilliant and worked really well for a long time, but soon enough we outgrew that as well.

“In this time, we’d probably gone from one truck to about 15, a lot of it was just doing deliveries around Warrnambool.

“We went on and built a bigger depot, and with the growth came work out of Melbourne with pretty much all of the major companies out of there, and over a period of about five years or so we picked up a lot of the work coming out of there.

“From picking up that work, which we still had right up to the present day, we went from about 20 trucks to probably around 40 in that span.

“They kept pestering us to open up more depots, we had the ones in Portland and Warrnambool, but they wanted one in Hamilton and another in Mount Gambier.

“That was a pretty big leap for us, but still we needed to get bigger, so Graham Ryan from Ryans Transportation came to us and said if you come to our depot, we’ll give you our freight.

“That changeover was a chance for a bit of time off and a holiday in Europe, and when we got back the place just kept expanding towards about 60 trucks and about 70-80 staff.”

All up, the business now has depots in Warrnambool, Portland, Hamilton, Colac and Geelong, along with subcontractors across the border in Mount Gambier.

Mr Allen said he expects the new owners, who have also purchased a depot in Melbourne, to experience a similar growth period as they expand from the largest urban centre in Victoria.

“It’ll finish up a pretty big business I reckon,” he said.

Community

With the range of freight and shipping which Allens Freight has handled over the years, both Mr Allen and Mrs Allen certainly have some interesting stories to share from over the years.

Mr Allen said one of the more intriguing ones comes from the period where they began transporting Chrisco hampers.

“We when we first started with those, we probably had around 25,000 boxes of them between Portland, Warrnambool and Hamilton (depots),” he said.

“Our shipping went as far down as Camperdown and Terang, and some of the people we met doing that, it was just incredible.

“We did that for at least 10 years, and that started to generate our Christmas holiday pay, but it was pretty hard work during that period.

“We started getting the scouts, football clubs, surf lifesaving clubs and schools involved with the distribution, and we just paid them per box to deliver it.

“You stop and think for a minute about just how many people were involved in that over the years.”

Mrs Allen explained that the hampers also proved to be useful for attracting new staff, with a handful of even current staff members being having started with the business through their involvement in that initiative.

They both said they look back on their time working in the industry with a sense of pride, as they saw the business as more than just a way to make an income.

“Just the sheer number of people we were able to have an impact on and work alongside was incredible, and sometimes you don’t even step back to realise just how much has been done and how many people have been affected over the years,” he said.

“Even just things like sporting clubs who needed trucks for the weekend or moving stuff from place to place to help with events.

“A lot of that stuff we covered and we just kind of used it as an opportunity for a bit of advertising for the business.”

Mr Allen said that Allens Freight is one of those businesses which has an impact on everyone’s day-to-day lives whether they feel that effect or not.

“We probably have 8-10 thousand boxes a day through our various depots, I reckon just about everyone in the south west would have received a box from us at some stage or another.”

Drawing to a close

Both Leigh and Barb Allen said finishing up with the business and selling has brought with it a sense of “relief” as well as accomplishment.

“To be honest the hardest part has been continually looking after people’s wellbeing as the company has grown… handling parcels and packing them on to trucks and transporting, that’s easy work,” Mr Allen said.

“We’ve had people who’ve rocked up at 2am for their night shift in Warrnambool, gone for a smoke at 4am and never come back, we’re always looking for people in that depot just to keep the place moving.

“That’s the relief factor coming into it I suppose.”

But despite their decision to move on from their ownership of the business, the family will still retain a connection with Allens Freight, as Leigh and Barb’s son Richard has taken on the role of Victorian manager.

“He’ll manage the south west as well as the Melbourne depot, the plan there is for the business to use those depots for their own freight rather than subcontracting it out,” he said.

The new business will operate under the name Allens Dupont Logistics, with Mr Allen saying he expects it to go on to even bigger and better things into the future.