R.B. Russell Transport Pty Ltd

The truck that rolled was part of the R.B. Russell Transport Pty Ltd fleet. For over 80 years the company has worked in the trucking industry. They own a modern fleet of over 100 trucks that include Kenworth and Mack prime movers. As ‘master carriers’ they are well known for delivering outstanding service and catering to clients with a wide range of needs, including those clients who need to move loads with special requirements.

Russell Transport has insured their fleet with NTI for longer than they can remember and there’s a very good reason for that – NTI’s exceptional customer service.

"The rollover happened very early on a Saturday morning," explained Julie Russell from Russell Transport. "The driver had collected the tallow from Beef City, which is west of Toowoomba, and was only about 500 metres from the point of discharge at Eagle Farm, Brisbane."

"He went too fast into the last corner and over she went. The two tanks rolled and came down onto a rock embankment that was beside a stormwater drain that fed into a creek; the creek flows into the Brisbane River. The rocks pierced the tanks and 40 tonnes of tallow came out."

"Thankfully the driver was ok. He let our office know what had happened and we got in touch with NTI. The timing of the accident – in the early hours of Saturday morning – meant we couldn’t reach our broker or our usual NTI contact but that didn’t matter. The young woman at NTI Accident Assist who took the call was exceptional and understood that urgent help was needed."

"Before we knew it all the necessary emergency services and environmental protection people were on site, along with NTI themselves," Julie said.

Rob Wass, Manager of NTI Accident Assist, dropped everything when he heard the news and headed to Eagle Farm.

"Having worked at NTI for 27 years, eight of those as Manager of Accident Assist, I’d thought I’d seen everything," Rob said, "but I was wrong. This was a real disaster. With the driver unharmed the focus was on cleaning up the site, and fast."

"We had disposable oil booms in place to stop the tallow spreading into the Brisbane River, so we knew we were safe there. But because the tallow had solidified, and was breaking up, we needed to find a way to effectively direct it towards the vacuum sucker trucks that were there to remove it from the waterway," Rob said.

Not afraid to get his hands dirty, Rob decided to buy an inflatable boat so he could get onto the water to help. He was joined in the boat by Julie’s brother, Ken Russell.

"They were out there in the boat with poles pulling the solidified tallow towards the sucker trucks," Julie explained. "Cleaning up the waterway was paramount to everyone, and I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised about the hands-on role NTI took because they’ve always been great, but it was above and beyond what I expected."

"NTI made things very easy," Julie added. "They managed everything – the clean up, the police, the media. They weren’t satisfied the road surface could be sufficiently cleaned so they even arranged for it to be resurfaced."

NTI Accident Assist is a free service available to all NTI policyholders 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Medical assistance, trauma counselling, vehicle recovery, load recovery, clean-up of the accident scene, message relay, driver repatriation, automatic claims lodgement and more are all part of Accident Assist.

Case Study: R.B. Russell Transport Pty Ltd
[Right click and "Save target as" to download]