By the 1920’s the delivery of the company’s papers to the many distribution points (street sellers, agents, trains, ferries and steamers etc.,) had become motorised requiring a fleet of cars/trucks.
In parallel with the construction of the new offices in Elizabeth Street, the company was also looking for new premises to garage and service their fleet of vehicles.
Woolloomooloo
In June 1925 a large lot occupying the eastern corner of Bland, Forbes and Nicholson Streets, Woolloomooloo was purchased.
Spain and Cosh, the same architects responsible for the new Elizabeth Street offices, were then engaged to design a 2-storey garage and workshop to occupy the whole site. The contract for construction was let in August and went to Stuart Bros., the same builders who were at that time just completing the new Elizabeth Street offices.
The Fleet
In 1925, fleet comprised 25 Dodge “cars” (light delivery vehicles), painted red and emblazoned with:
At least 2 of the Sydney newspapers were obviously happy with the performance of the Dodge Bros light delivery vehicles and Graham trucks, one of their competitors, Sun Newspapers Ltd, had 28 and by 1927 had another 20 on order.
As well as “cars” and trucks, motorcycles with side-cars were also used, mainly for deliveries to the inner-city street sellers.
The garage played a critical part in the operation of the business. The vehicles were refuelled there from pumps connected to an “immense underground tank”. And, the vehicles were turned out daily “spick and span”, cleaned using a “compressed-air water bath”.
The garage was one of the last the S Bennett Ltd assets disposed of. The last of the trucks were sold in May 1931,
and after this it appears to have been used as a paper store by Associated Newspapers. Sun Newspapers, Ltd., already had a garage, just up the road at 93-103 Dowling Street, which became the sole Associated Newspaper’s garage after the cessation of the Evening News.
The NRMA buys the garage
The building was finally sold to the NRMA in September 1937, for £8,000. The accommodation for the NRMA Patrol Headquarters, in the basement of NRMA House in Spring Street, had proved inadequate in the face of the expanding volume of business as the ownership of motor vehicles boomed. Membership had increased from just 1500 in 1923 to 56,000. The 44 metropolitan patrol staff and their vehicles were rehoused on the ground floor at Woolloomooloo.
The second floor was used to accommodate the cars of country members visiting Sydney. This was part of the “piloting service” the Association provided to country members unfamiliar with driving in the city. They would meet country drivers on the fringe of the city, drive them to their accommodation and store their vehicle until they were ready to return home, when they would reverse the process (e.g., country members coming from the North would phone from Hornsby and then be met at St Leonards, where the NRMA “pilot” would take the wheel). Using the “latest technology”, the cars were raised to the second floor by hydraulic lift.