The man who created one of the truck industry’s best known and longest established dealerships, Alan Brown has died after a short illness at the age, he was 94.
Brown along with Jack Hurley started Brown and Hurley in a small garage in Kyogle in 1946 and grew the business into a major truck sales and service operation with nine branches across the eastern states of Australia.
Brown and Hurley joint managing director Rob Brown said that throughout his life his father held onto the company’s ethos of ‘principles before profit’.
“Alan was very gifted mechanically; he could fix pretty much anything and took great pride in making things, like furniture and even solar heating systems.”
“As the Brown and Hurley business has grown over the years, Alan would still describe himself as ‘just a motor mechanic’.”
Alan was a very humble man who treated everyone equally, and he assumed everyone would treat him the same.
“One of Alan’s favourite sayings was, ‘I complained I had no shoes until I met a man with no feet”
Alan was not only an Australian transport industry icon but also a legend of Kyogle, the birthplace of Brown and Hurley.
Starting off his career at the age of 14, at Balmain Bros, Cooma where he began his apprenticeship.
In 1942 not only did Alan join the Army as a mechanical instructor, he also married Lil and together they went on to have five children, four girls and one boy. Lil passed away late 2013.
It was in the army where Alan’s life-long friendship and partnership began with Jack Hurley.
One of the greatest attributes of both Alan and Jack’s was their ability to get on with people making them not only great business partners but great mates as well.
As their Army duty came to an end in 1946, both Alan and Jack decided to go into business together. This lead to the opening of Brown and Hurley, which over the last 70 years has developed into today’s Brown and Hurley Group, The Big Truck People.
Opening their first business premises in Kyogle in a small garage, the company has now grown to 9 branches located throughout Northern New South Wales and Queensland.