CRT Group is an intermodal transport company in Australia. It was founded in 1954 as Colin Rees Transport, a taxi truck company in

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

. In 1981 it became known as the CRT Group, and by the time of its acquisition by QR National in June 2005, was in the top 10 logistics companies in Australia with a turnover of $80 million, and moving over 600,000 tonnes of freight a year. The company specialised in the movement of food products,

polymer A polymer () is a chemical substance, substance or material that consists of very large molecules, or macromolecules, that are constituted by many repeat unit, repeating subunits derived from one or more species of monomers. Due to their br ...

s, and

plastic Plastics are a wide range of synthetic polymers, synthetic or Semisynthesis, semisynthetic materials composed primarily of Polymer, polymers. Their defining characteristic, Plasticity (physics), plasticity, allows them to be Injection moulding ...

Railway operations

CRT Group operated a number of terminals, with those at Yennora in

and

Altona North Altona North is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south-west of Melbourne's Melbourne central business district, Central Business District, located within the City of Hobsons Bay Local government areas of Victoria, local government ar ...

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

provided with their own railway sidings. Privately owned X100 and X200 class rail tractors X101, X107, X118, X208, X209 and X216 were used to shunt, as well as larger 73 class shunters 7322, 7333 and 7334 with X209, 7322 and 7334 painted in a blue and off white scheme with CRT Group logos. CRT Group also introduced the first CargoSprinter to Australia in February 2002. Built by Windhoff in Germany this Diesel Multiple Unit consists of two driving and power units, each fitted with a full width cab and two

Volvo The Volvo Group (; legally Aktiebolaget Volvo, shortened to AB Volvo, stylized as VOLVO) is a Swedish multinational manufacturing corporation headquartered in Gothenburg. While its core activity is the production, distribution and sale of truck ...

truck engines for propulsion, which operate in a push pull mode, with up to seven trailers in between. The radio communication system in the CargoSprinter is based around a computer running the

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

operating system, with application software written using C, Phoenix and Pascal (

Kylix In the pottery of ancient Greece, a kylix ( , ; ; also spelled ''cylix''; : kylikes , ) is the most common type of cup in the period, usually associated with the drinking of wine. The cup often consists of a rounded base and a thin stem under ...

). Original specification CargoSprinter's used

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

connections between electronics modules, second generation machines used

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

across a LAN. After a number of promotional trips, the CargoSprinter operated a tri-weekly service from Melbourne to

Wodonga Wodonga (pronounced ; ) is a city on the Victorian side of the border with New South Wales, north-east of Melbourne, Australia. It is part of the twin city of Albury-Wodonga and is located wholly within the boundaries of the City of Wodonga L ...

in 2003, followed by a port shuttle from the

Port of Melbourne The Port of Melbourne is the largest port for containerised and general cargo in Australia. It is located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Victoria, and covers an area at the mouth of the Yarra River, downstream of Bolte Bridge, which is at th ...

from 1 September that year. The company also owned over 2000 low profile silver shipping containers that were used on their own services. Linehaul of freight between CRT Group terminals was contracted to outside railway operators. In the early 2000s Freight Australia was contracted to move freight between Melbourne and Sydney. The contract contained a clause that if Freight Australia was acquired by a competitor of CRT Group, of locomotive power (calculated by the business CRT Group was offering Freight Australia) was to be transferred to CRT Group. As a result, when Freight Australia was acquired by

Pacific National Pacific National is one of Australia's largest rail freight businesses. History In February 2002, National Rail Corporation, National Rail's freight operations and rollingstock, jointly owned by the Government of Australia, Federal, Governm ...

in 2004, X53, X54, G516 and G534 were transferred to CRT. After this date linehaul of CRT freight passed to QR National along with the four Freight Australia locomotives, who also operated

Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

services for the company.

QR National purchase

In June 2005, QR National acquired CRT Group. A revised corporate image was unveiled in August 2008.

Qube Logistics purchase

In August 2014, Qube Logistics entered an agreement to purchase the business from Aurizon. It was completed in December 2014 after the

Australian Competition & Consumer Commission The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is the chief competition regulator of the Government of Australia, located within the Department of the Treasury. It was established in 1995 with the amalgamation of the Australian Tra ...

approved the sale.CRT sale, bad weather slash Aurizon intermodal
''Rail Express'' 20 July 2015

References

{{Reflist Defunct railway companies of Australia Railway companies established in 1954 Railway companies disestablished in 2014 1954 establishments in Australia 2014 disestablishments in Australia