Brothers Michael and Jeffrey Swart have turned adversity into opportunity in building their multi-million-dollar trucking company in the Northern Territory.
Story + Photos Kerry Sharp
In their trucking yard on Darwin’s industrial fringe, Michael and Jeffrey Swart are loading up the necessary mechanical ‘grunt’ to tackle their latest challenge. A 30-tonne excavator is buried up to its roof in mud on the Mary River floodplain and its frantic owner has called in their expertise.
“They’d been digging for three days and the harder they tried, the deeper it sank,” says Jeffrey who, with his identical twin Michael runs the family-owned Northern Territory trucking company Wildman River Stock Contractors (WRSC). “It took two dozers, a digger and a whole day of sweat and toil to get it out.” They often get calls to rescue bogged vehicles, but these are small jobs compared to most of the contracts they take on. They’ve worked on bridges, roads and remote highway earthworks, transported houses, boats and huge imported dump-truck tyres for the Macarthur River Mine, hauled 20,000 tonnes of blue metal into Arnhem Land, and carted water for three months for a West Australian desert exploration venture.
This story excerpt is from Issue #124
Outback Magazine: April/May 2019
