Jim was bought up in the eastern wheat belt shire of Warralackin and Westonia. His parent’s ran a grocery store and to make a few extra quid in his spare time, his father worked as a grain handler. After this Jim’s dad tried his hand as a pumpman at the Edna May Gold mine in Westonia. Jim learnt a lot in those early days about hard work and trying your hand at a few different things. As a young boy before school, Jim had a job collecting and delivering the mail to the Edna May mine. He remembers receiving his first pay packet and promptly giving it to his Mother. Jim was always helping out and was keen to pay his way in the world from a very young age. Most days after school Jim could be found helping his parents in the shop or delivering orders. Still in his early teens he became an off-sider to a driver carting potash. This was his first real taste of the trucking industry. No proof of age was required for a drivers licence in these days and Jim quickly found himself behind the wheel of the truck. Jim quite liked the job of driving and progressed to driving trucks with dog trailers carting wood around the district. Still in his teens his next job was driving buses. At the age of 19 he joined the WA police force and ended up in the Heavy Haulage section. The transport industry was starting to become a common theme in Jim’s life by now. He left the force to join Russell’s Transport for a short stint and really learnt a lot about how a larger transport company ran. In 1959 at the age of 27, Jim bought his first second hand truck, and remembers clearly the excitement of setting up Temples Transport, his very own company. Whilst conscious of the risks associated with borrowing money to establish a business, he never doubted his ability to create an enduring and prosperous transport company.
And so the story began………………………………..
