Toowoomba region trailer manufacturing company desperately needs 40 skilled workers to meet $40m of orders

Lionel Moore has $40m in orders that need to be met by his major trailer manufacturing company — but he can’t find the staff anywhere to help him achieve it quickly.

Moore Trailers joint managing director Lionel Moore has 40 vacancies at his business, but can't find the workers to fill them.

A major semi-trailer manufacturer just outside Toowoomba cannot find enough staff to fill more than $40 million in orders over the coming year, much to the frustration of the company’s owners.

Lionel and Shayne Moore, who are the managing directors of Moore Trailers at Yarranlea, southwest of Toowoomba, has more than 40 job vacancies currently for welding, spray-painting and even entry-level manual labour.

Lionel said the company, which was one of the largest custom trailer manufacturers in Queensland, had completed a $15 million expansion to keep up with demand — but not enough workers to run it fully.

“We’ve done an expansion here, we’ve built a multimillion-dollar complex, valued at about $15-20m,” he said.

“We’re currently running about 90 staff and we want to increase that to 130, but we can’t find them anywhere.

“We’ve built a whole new factory with 20 overhead cranes and we can’t get staff.

“We’ve got staff here from China, Vietnam, Iraq, Indonesia and the Philippines — We just can’t find (enough) Australian workers.

At the moment I’ve got $40 million worth of trailers on order — (I’m) frustrated.”

Mr Moore said the international travel shutdown had hampered his efforts to bring in international workers.

He said COVID-19 had exposed the dearth of Australian-born residents who had a trade and some experience.

“With the way (it works now) everybody does Year 12 and nobody does an apprenticeship,” he said.

“ (COVID-19 affected us) dramatically, because we can’t bring them in from overseas — (otherwise) I’d have people from other countries already.”

Mr Moore said along with being unable to find appropriate staff to fill the vacancies, he said workers who the company had trained up would often take their skills away to a different industry.

“We’re running between 16 to 20 apprentices, but as soon as they get the skills, they go the mines,” he said.

“There are no qualified people out there – they’re on the mines or they’re at home.

“All you need (here) is a will to work and a trade.

“We need people with some experience, but we have got people and will train them up.

“If they work the full 60 hours, they’ll take home $2000 a week.”

Toowoomba’s unemployment rate sits at 6.6 per cent, with 5100 people listed as jobless as November last year.

Anyone wanting to apply for a job at Moore Trailers can call 4693 1088.