George Hedley was born in Nightcaps on December 12, 1926. He lived at Tinkertown and went to school at Nightcaps.

Always interested in trucks, he would often go for rides in Sam McRae’s trucks. When he left school, he worked in a small, family-owned coal mine with his father Tom and brother Jack until he was old enough to get his heavy traffic license.

He then went to drive for Sam McRae.

George was married to Jean Russell.

 In 1952, he bought a small carrying business in Lumsden consisting of three trucks, two fords and one army surplus Chev. He added an O Bedford from the coal mine that had closed and started G Hedley, Carrier, Lumsden, Phone 56.

It wasn’t long before more trucks were needed, so two Commers were purchased – an artic and a flat deck. A Bedford tip truck was later added before Leyland became the preferred choice.

In the early days of transport, George like other operators, would stretch the rail restrictions to the limit, so he got to read his name quite often in the court notices. This led to a change of name to Lumsden Transport Ltd on the advice of Charley Hay, their accountant and adviser at that time.

By the early 1960s the fleet consisted of seven Leylands and two Albions, and in 1964, two Mercedes 1418s. In the early 1960s, development started on the Manapouri power scheme, with involved significant cartage contracts on the horizon. In February 1964, George along with Cliff Bennetts [Mossburn Transport], and Terry Gilligan [Te Anau Transport] formed a company with equal share holding called Manapouri Haulage, with the specific purpose of carrying out these contracts and called on their own principle companies to help as required. 

This worked so well, in December 1964 the three principles merged with Manapouri Haulage, and the trio also purchased Five Rivers Transport to form what is now known as Northern Southland Transport (NSTH). ln 1967, they acquired J E Price of Garston with two trucks, and in February 1969, Wakatipu Transport amalgamated with NSTH.

George then went on to develop new businesses that were purchased by NSTH, including Southland Bin Services, the Invercargill freight depot in Bond
Street, and Trans West Holdings on the West Coast. One of his achievements there was to develop a two-deck cattle trailer that would fit on to the Taramakau road rail bridge. He represented NSTH on the Trans West board of directors along with John Davies.

In 1982, George was dismissed as a director of NSTH and set about starting a Lumsden based transport again. To obtain the goods services licences needed, he bought McDougalls Transport at Winton, and three of the licences were transferred to owner drivers and the balance held by the company now called Hedley’s Transport Ltd. George operated this company out of Winton until 1985 when his shares were taken over by Tom and Lanie Hedley, who operated until 2006 with 14 units. 

George retired in the late 80s and went to Nerang Australia where he loved to travel, often going outback and stopping over in some of Jim Cooper’s roadhouses.

George served the local community in many ways, giving whatever was needed in the way of machinery or cartage. He always turned up with a full water tank for the fire brigade whenever the alarm went off. George loved golf, was very active in the club and shifted the clubhouse to the new golf course in one piece. He was chairman on the Lumsden town board and was a member of the Lions.

George passed away on March 12, 2003.