The original Road Trains of Australia (RTA) was started by Noel Buntine in the early 1980’s from the remains of Buntine Roadways.

In 1985, Noel Buntine sold the Company to Dick David and Ken Warriner who operated it for 8 years until it was sold to Jim Cooper, of Gulf Transport Group, and Mick Flynn, of Flynn Petroleum, in 1993. Jim Cooper bought out Mick Flynn to take full ownership in 1995.

In 2006, competition between RTA and Hampton Transport Services, a Western Australian company owned by the Jones family from Kalgoorlie-Boulder that was involved in mining, heavy haulage, freight and livestock transport, had reached the point where the livestock fleets were the similar size and operating the same routes.

Jim Cooper and Dave Jones from Hampton, the current Managing Director of RTA, saw the economic sense of amalgamating the operations of the two companies and negotiated the sale of the RTA business to Hampton Transport Services, Dave and his brother Bart Jones Jnr to create Road Trains of Australia Pty Ltd in its current form. In 2007 RTA acquired Hansen Livestock Transport and its depots in Longreach and Quilpie.

Under the ownership of Hampton and the Jones brothers, who still own and operate the Company, RTA has grown to be the largest privately owned livestock transporter in Australia.

RTA’s operations today cover the entire top half of Australia, with the company’s 90+ prime movers averaging between 145,000 to 170,000km per year, much of which is traveled in clouds of bulldust on unsealed roads.