Their first rig was a 15 year-old 180hp Mercedes Benz 1418 prime mover, hooked to an even older 10.2m (33 ft) single deck livestock crate which required many weeks of renovation- chipping rust and replacing boards – before it was schmick enough to be submitted to Queensland Transport for a roadworthy inspection.

At the time they were in their 20s and living at Ingham, their hometown, Liz although a mother of two, was nursing and Owen was a cane harvester driver.

However it was Owen’s dream to operate his own a livestock transport business, ever since driving full time for Watts Brothers, one of the many jobs he did in previous years.

As in those days it was still possible to live on one wage, they were able to save the other, which enabled them to buy the truck and trailer.

Their first job was carting cattle from the King Ranch owned Tully River Station, to the meatworks at Cairns, a round trip of 480km.

King Ranch paid $1/km for the deck of 18-20 bullocks to be transported the 150km to the works ($8/head).

Now with diesel costing up to 1.75/L (it currently costs $5500-$6000 to fill one of their road train prime movers) and wages 700 percent higher, it would cost closer to $33/head to have a beast transported 150km.

After that first trip Liz and Owen were confident their decision to join the business world had been correct.

However their joy was short lived, as on the second trip the Merc spat an axle – fortunately Araldite and some spot welds held it together long enough for them to source a replacement.

During the 1980s their family grew to five - four girls and a boy – which with running the office kept Liz pretty busy.

The business was also expanding and in the early 1990s they purchased Kings Transport and Hasenkamps Transport; operated five rigs; had contracted for most of the livestock transport business of a large pastoral company; had survived Paul Keating’s 24 percent interest rates; were actually making enough profit to pay tax; and needed a new home for the business, as they had outgrown their rented space at Ingham.

So in 1995 they bought a nine hectare block on the Flinders Highway, west of Townsville, built a house and moved their operational base to a more central position.

*Full story in this week’s North Queensland Register, out Thursday.