About Truck & Bus News

Truck & Bus News

Overview

Truck & Bus News is an Australian trade publication for the commercial vehicle industry, published online at truckandbus.net.au by publisher Jon Thomson. It is the digital home of the long-running Australian trucking magazine Transport & Trucking Australia and its companion title Coach & Bus, carrying daily news, road tests and features for the people who build, sell, operate and maintain trucks, buses and coaches in Australia. The site publishes under an unmistakably editorial voice — news is reported and commented on rather than simply aggregated — and its coverage ranges from manufacturer launches and dealer news to regulation, safety recalls, industry awards and the politics of road transport.

The publication should not be confused with two similarly named titles. Truck & Bus Transportation was a separate Sydney monthly magazine published by Shennen Publishing from 1936 until 2003. Truck and Bus News at truckandbusnews.net is a Malaysian magazine for truck and bus fleet operators, founded in 2010 and published from Petaling Jaya by Valebridge Publications. Truck & Bus News at truckandbus.net.au is the Australian publication profiled here.

History

The publication's lineage runs through the print magazine Transport and Trucking Today (T&TT), a national trucking title published by Jon Thomson together with Geoff Paradise. Paradise, a veteran trucking journalist and publisher, died in February 2015, aged 61, following a car accident near his home; Thomson's obituary for his business partner of more than three decades was published on the site, and Thomson continued the business as publisher. Under Thomson the magazine was rebranded Transport & Trucking Australia — by its hundredth issue the magazine described itself as Australia's most authoritative truck and transport magazine, with Allan Whiting as editor-in-chief — and issue announcements, road tests and features from the print editions were published through the Truck & Bus News website, which became the operation's daily outlet.

The print magazine passed its 122nd issue, and the website archive preserves the title's reporting across more than a decade of Australian trucking: Brisbane Truck Show coverage, first drives of returning brands such as International's ProStar, and operator profiles from the Pilbara — where Thomson revisited the Pilbara Heavy Haulage Girls, the women drivers of the north-west's road train fleets — to regional New South Wales. Industry directories and search records for the site reach back to at least the early 2010s, and its author archive runs to hundreds of pages, making it one of the deeper online records of the Australian commercial vehicle market in that period. A companion title, Coach & Bus, covers the bus and coach sector, with editor Peter Barnwell, a motoring writer of some thirty-five years' experience, leading its road test coverage. The group also produces Truck and Bus TV video road tests, in which Thomson and Barnwell drive and assess new trucks and buses on camera. In the mid-2020s the website is the publication's most visible edition, publishing new material most weeks.

Content and Coverage

Truck & Bus News covers the Australian commercial vehicle industry end to end. News reporting follows the truck and bus manufacturers active in Australia — Mercedes-Benz, Scania, Volvo, Isuzu, Hino, Fuso, Kenworth, Iveco, UD and others — through product launches, model updates, dealer appointments and sales results, together with the component and technology suppliers around them. Industry coverage takes in the Australian Trucking Association and state associations, the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator and its operations, heavy vehicle safety and fatigue policy, and the shift to zero-emission trucks and buses, which has become a dominant theme: recent reporting has followed battery-electric and hydrogen launches, electric bus trials by major waste and transit operators, and the Sydney Bus Expo. The coverage also extends across the Tasman, with New Zealand dealer and market news appearing alongside Australian reporting, in keeping with the Australasian scope of the industry's awards and manufacturer networks.

Road tests are a signature strand, published in the Road Tests channel and as Truck and Bus TV videos, covering prime movers, rigids, vans, buses and coaches — and occasionally lighter machinery reviewed for fleet buyers. The magazine's testers have assessed B-double combinations from Scania, Western Star and Iveco, flagship Japanese models such as Fuso's Shogun, and the new generation of battery-electric trucks from the European manufacturers. Features include executive interviews, such as the site's "Coffee with the CEOs" conversations with brand chiefs — among them the head of Volvo Trucks in Australia — operator profiles, and commentary on industry awards including the Australasian Truck of the Year, which the site reported in September 2026 when the award went to the Mercedes-Benz Actros ProCabin. Coverage of the bus and coach sector runs in parallel, from transit bus procurement and regional operator deliveries to the zero-emission exhibitors at the Sydney Bus Expo, where the site reported on entrants such as Foton Mobility and Wrightbus. The site was publishing new articles in late September 2026, confirming its operation as a current title.

Audience and Reach

Truck & Bus News is written for the Australian road transport industry: fleet operators and owner-drivers, truck and bus dealers, manufacturer and distributor staff, body builders and component suppliers, and the associations and regulators who deal with them. Its companion print magazine, Transport & Trucking Australia, has been sold through newsstands and to registered readers, with issue content republished online. No audited circulation or readership figures for the website or the magazine are published, and the publication claims none in the material consulted; its reach is best evidenced by the longevity of the title, the depth of its online archive — its principal author's index alone runs to hundreds of pages of articles — and its continuing access to manufacturer launches, executives and industry events.

Digital Presence

The publication's digital presence is centred on truckandbus.net.au, a WordPress-based news site organised into news, features and road tests, with manufacturer tag archives that are maintained as running files on each brand's Australian activity, updated frequently with new manufacturer, regulatory and industry stories — new articles appeared throughout September 2026. The site carries the digital editions and issue announcements of Transport & Trucking Australia and Coach & Bus, and hosts the Truck and Bus TV video road tests. Its archive, extending back well over a decade, is a substantial record of the modern Australian truck and bus market.

Ownership and Organisation

Truck & Bus News is published by Jon Thomson, who serves as publisher and is the site's principal writer. Thomson continued the business after the death of his publishing partner Geoff Paradise in 2015, and publishes the companion magazines Transport & Trucking Australia and Coach & Bus from the same operation, with Allan Whiting having served as the trucking magazine's editor-in-chief and Peter Barnwell editing Coach & Bus. The publication is based in New South Wales; this listing records Sydney as its city, in line with its inventory entry, although the site itself does not publish an office address. It is an independent Australian operation and is not connected with the Malaysian Truck and Bus News or its publisher.

Contact and Availability

Truck & Bus News is available online at truckandbus.net.au, where its news, features, road tests and video content can be read free of charge, and where new issues of Transport & Trucking Australia and Coach & Bus are announced. The public business email field for this listing is intentionally left blank.