Wall of fame honour for Tasmania trucking pioneer

Triabunna's Elphinstone Engineering’s founder, Graeme Elphinstone, has been inducted into the Shell Rimula National Road Transport Wall of Fame. 

The honour is recognition of Graeme's lifelong commitment and outstanding contributions to Australia’s road transport industry. 

His name now joins an elite group of trucking pioneers and legends on the Wall of Fame, underscoring the pivotal role of innovators and industry leaders in the success of road transport.

Since its inception more than 20 years ago, the Wall of Fame has recognised and celebrated more than 1,700 distinguished members of the road transport community – from legendary truck drivers to visionary engineers 

Graeme began his career in the early 1970s and quickly became a problem-solver for the transport challenges of the era. In 1976, Graeme and his brother Dale imported and fitted Australia’s first on-vehicle truck weighing system – installing scales on a Tasmanian log truck to accurately measure its load.

This pioneering step revolutionised load management, allowing drivers to know their weight before hitting the highway, and laid the foundation for modern onboard mass monitoring in heavy vehicles.

With Graeme’s help, Tasmanian Pulp and Forest Holdings’ woodchip mill in Triabunna introduced a groundbreaking “non-payment for overload” policy that removed the incentive for truck drivers to carry overweight loads.

``Vehicle overloading was prevalent,” Graeme recalled of the 1970s, when recounting why he pursued onboard scales. 

``One of the biggest problems for truck operators was accurately estimating the weight of their load. For the first time, logging transport had entered a new level of professionalism, with far fewer roadside weighbridge violations and drivers finally enjoying ‘peace of mind’ as they now had a legal load.’’

Over the years, Graeme Elphinstone has led the way with a series of engineering breakthroughs in trailer design, suspension technology, and vehicle configurations. His ideas, often ahead of their time, have since become industry standards in Australia, significantly improving driver safety, regulatory compliance, and operational efficiency across the road transport sector.

His company’s design and deployment of folding trailers, multi-axle configurations such as tri‑axle, and advanced load distribution platforms have been widely adopted across the timber, mining, and bulk haulage sectors.