About Owner Driver

Owner Driver

Overview

Owner Driver (styled Owner//Driver) is an Australian monthly magazine and website for the people who own and drive trucks for a living: owner-drivers, small fleet operators and the drivers of businesses running anywhere from a single vehicle to a small fleet. Published by Prime Creative Media, it combines a monthly print magazine with a news website, a weekly e-newsletter and one of the country's largest online marketplaces for new and used trucks, trailers, parts and accessories.

The title's founding purpose, printed on its front cover from the first issue, was that it is "Dedicated to the Success of the Person Behind the Wheel" — a description carried in the publication's own LinkedIn profile. Its editorial mix is deliberately practical: industry news and regulation, truck tests and reviews, business and safety issues, profiles of operators and their vehicles, long-running columns written by working drivers, and a monthly Truck of the Month feature celebrating a standout rig. It is produced from Melbourne, Victoria, where Prime Creative Media is headquartered, although the magazine was founded in Brisbane and retains a strongly national readership built up over more than three decades.

History

Owner Driver was launched in September 1992 by Publishing Services Australia (PSA), a small independent Brisbane-based newspaper and magazine company that already published Australasian Transport News (ATN). PSA announced the new title in August 1992, explaining that while ATN served the industry's management, it wanted a publication that recognised, in the words of its own 400th-edition history, "the pride, professionalism and concerns of the men and women who represented the industry from behind the wheel".

The founding editor was Andrew Stewart. Stewart set out the paper's agenda in its first issue: to highlight professional owner-drivers as "an example to the whole road transport industry", and, as he put it at the time, to help owner-drivers "know the facts affecting their industry, pick up a few tips to save a dollar or make life easier, and to feel pride in the tough job they do". He also wanted to counter a public image of the industry shaped, as he saw it, by its loudest voices rather than its working majority.

The first issue carried a column by Ken Wilkie, 'Wilkie's Watch', on page 17; Wilkie remained a regular contributor for some 25 years. Cartoonist John Allison joined a few months after launch and was still drawing for the magazine at its 400th edition. The early agenda — rising diesel prices, inconsistent road enforcement and government revenue-raising from the industry's most vulnerable sector — set a pattern that, as the magazine itself observed in 2026, has changed remarkably little.

Ownership changed several times. Stewart sold PSA to Trader Classifieds, part of Australian Consolidated Press, in early 2007; ACP was later sold to Bauer Media. In 2020 the title was among those bought by Mercury Capital, and in 2021 Prime Creative Media bought Owner Driver and has owned it since. Through these changes the magazine evolved in format from a newsprint newspaper, first adding a gloss section and then, under long-serving editor Greg Bush, converting to an all-gloss magazine. Earlier editors included Pete Armstrong, who left to become the inaugural editor of Prime Mover in 2007.

The magazine published its 400th edition in May 2026, marking the milestone with a retrospective history of the title. That history also recorded the death of founding editor Andrew Stewart in February 2026.

Content and Coverage

Owner Driver's coverage is built around the working life of its readers. News coverage follows the agencies and issues that determine an operator's costs and compliance: the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator, fatigue management and enforcement operations, rest-area funding, fuel excise and road-user charging, and industrial questions such as sham contracting, which the magazine investigated in a feature opening its January 2026 edition. Industry bodies including the Australian Trucking Association and NatRoad feature regularly as sources and commentators.

Vehicle coverage is the other pillar. The magazine publishes on-road tests and reviews of new trucks, a monthly Truck of the Month profile — Michael Mahon's Volvo took the honour in the September 2026 edition — restoration stories, wrapped-truck features and reports from truck shows and community events such as the Illawarra Convoy and the Dane Ballinger Memorial Truck Show at Bathurst, both covered by contributor Warren Aitken in late 2025.

Safety and technology form a third strand. The September 2026 edition, for example, examined the growing adoption of advanced driver assistance systems, changing fatigue-management practices and compliance technology, alongside its reporting of a rise in driver fatigue non-compliance and the worsening national truck driver shortage. Contributor Warren Aitken's work in the same period ranged from an Isuzu manufacturer test day to the Scenic Rim Truck Show, illustrating the blend of machinery, events and road-level reporting the title maintains.

Its columnists give the title much of its character. Rod Hannifey has written the 'Eyes On The Road' column since 2001, when founding editor Andrew Stewart invited him to contribute after he won the ATA National Professional Driver of the Year award; by Hannifey's own account, published in the 400th-edition history, he had missed only one column in the intervening years. The magazine also carries the classified marketplace, in print and online, which it promotes as a major channel for buying and selling trucks, trailers, parts and accessories.

Audience and Reach

The magazine is aimed at owner-drivers, small fleet operators and fleet drivers, largely at businesses operating between one and ten trucks, according to Prime Creative Media's description of the title. Its readers are responsible for purchasing decisions on trucks, trailers, parts, servicing, finance and insurance, which makes the audience commercially valuable to suppliers despite its specialist size.

Published reach figures are the publisher's own. Prime Creative Media's brand page for the title cites 42,200-plus readers and 208,000-plus viewers across its platforms; those figures are reproduced here as the publisher's claims, undated on the page and not independently audited. The most recent audited figure in the public record is historical: the title's LinkedIn profile cites a September 2014 CAB audited circulation of 37,118, presented there as evidence of its then position as Australia's biggest-circulating truck publication. No current audited circulation is published.

Digital Presence

The magazine's website, ownerdriver.com.au, carries daily news between monthly print editions, the current edition's features, truck reviews and the classified marketplace of dealer and private listings. A weekly e-newsletter, Owner//Driver, is promoted across the site, and the title maintains an active social media presence, which the publisher describes as a key channel through which the industry follows its news and engages with its writers. Digital editions of recent issues — including the January, July and September 2026 editions, each announced on the site as it landed — confirm the monthly print cadence continuing through 2026.

Ownership and Organisation

Owner Driver is owned and published by Prime Creative Media, the Melbourne-based business-to-business publisher, which acquired the magazine in 2021 from Mercury Capital. It sits within a Prime Creative Media transport portfolio whose sister titles include Prime Mover and Big Rigs, and the company describes itself as Australia's largest independently owned B2B media organisation — its own characterisation of its market position. Editorial production is handled by the publisher's in-house team; Greg Bush served for many years as the magazine's editor and public figurehead, and the 400th-edition retrospective was written from within the title's editorial team.

Contact and Availability

Owner Driver is published monthly in print and distributed nationally, including through truck stops, with subscriptions and single-issue access promoted on its website. The website is ownerdriver.com.au, where readers can subscribe to the print magazine and the weekly newsletter, browse the classifieds and contact the editorial and advertising teams through the site's forms and media kit. The publisher, Prime Creative Media, is based at 379 Docklands Drive, Docklands, Victoria 3008, and publishes its switchboard number as +61 3 9690 8766 on its title websites.