Country roots of Australian empire: Inside the rise and rise of Carl Green

The founder of a multimillion-dollar family company with interstate outlets and new expansions in the works has opened up on the transformation of the business from its humble origins.

The founder of a multimillion-dollar business empire that shows no sign of slowing has spoken of his humble beginnings in regional Queensland, and the global event that helped launch his company into the stratosphere.

Carl Green was born in Gympie to parents Betty and Ray Green, who moved from England when he was four years old, attending the local public schools before meeting and marrying his wife Judy in 1989 in a service at the city’s Surface Hill Church.

Mr Green said they met through mutual friends, when they were aged 20 and 17.

Their firstborn, Jack, arrived in 1991, and second child Samantha followed in 1993.

For several years, from 1989 to 1996, they bounced around Queensland selling used cars and running caravan parks.

But in the latter year the couple returned to their hometown to start their own car dealership.

When the rise of online car sales disrupted the market soon after that, the Greens moved into a niche market in the hope it might give their new business a boost.

Carl Green, founder of Green RV, which started in Gympie and is on its way to becoming a national empire.

“We’ll have a crack at (selling caravans),” Mr Green said from the Gympie Muster on Thursday where he was running a demonstration site for the business.

It was a “crack” that propelled the family business into the stratosphere, with dealerships now found not only across Queensland, but interstate, transforming Green RV into the largest privately owned RV dealer in the country with an annual turnover of about $140 million.

Mr Green said he expected it would be the country’s largest RV dealer overall within the next 12-18 months, adding a new chapter to an extraordinary career that started as a 17-year-old detailer at Gympie Car World.

Speaking from a demonstration near the Muster rodeo arena, where his company was entrenched for the duration of the festival, Mr Green said his career had taken him to a few places before finding a home back in Gympie.

For a time he “floated around Murgon, Gayndah … then was in the mines at Mt Isa, then ran a used car yard in Mt Isa,” while also operating caravan parks and motels in the region.

Green RV started in Gympie and now has outlets in multiple locations across Australia including the Sunshine Coast.

He moved home for family and soon after opened Cooloola Cars and Commercial, the business destined to become Green RV.

The company’s first expansion was to Brisbane, before opening a shop at Forest Glen on the Sunshine Coast.

As the company expanded, so too did the number of Green family members working within it.

Mr Green’s son Jack became first general manager, then CEO in 2019, and his daughter Samantha is now counted among the company’s ranks too.

Not that its growth as a family business was Mr Green’s idea.

“I never thought my kids would (join) … I sent them away when they left school because I didn’t want them to be mollycoddled by us,” he said.

“They came back of their own accord.”

He said Jack’s addition introduced “young blood, fresher ideas, more energy probably”.

It also coincided with the spread of Covid into a global pandemic, which locked down international borders and caused extraordinary disruption to economic markets worldwide.

“How’s that for a baptism of fire (for Jack)?” Mr Green said.

The business’s family roots have expanded with Carl Green’s son Jack (left) now the CEO.

“All our staff were told to stay home.

“We had a crisis meeting going ‘wow - what are we going to do here?’

“Jack had never been through a serious financial crisis in his time; I’d been through a few.”

In a twist, it soon became clear the RV industry was sitting in a unique position.

“All of a sudden the only holiday you could take was in Australia,” Mr Green said.

“Covid was a really big push, in a good and a bad way.”

The pandemic and its rules brought more competition into the industry, and in recent years the boom had begun to taper off with the pandemic now largely considered to be over.

Judy and Carl Green at the 2023 Gympie Muster, where Green RV and its associated outlets held a stall for the tens of thousands of guests streaming through the gates.

Green RV was still powering on, despite a wider market downturn, Mr Green said.

“You’ve got to work harder and smarter,” he said.

At least one new dealership is on the horizon with plans lodged to open an outlet at Bundaberg.

He hoped work would start on the site after Christmas.

It would join existing outlets, including those at the Sunshine Coast, Toowoomba, Brisbane and Newcastle.

And while the original Gympie site where it all began no longer bore the Green RV banner but NewGen Caravans, it was still in the family.

“Everyone believes Gympie is no longer us,” Mr Green said, reiterating the outlet was under the company umbrella.

Not only was it still in the family, it highlighted how much larger the RV empire had become with other brands, Mr Green said.

“When you’re driving on the highway you see QCCC, you see Snowy River Caravan Centre, Region Caravan Centre, Green RV, Caravan World - they’re all our companies.”

Carl Green estimated about 30,000-40,000 RVs and caravans had been sold by his company in its two-decade history.

It was extremely likely you would see a caravan sold by the Green family in your travels, too.

Mr Green estimated between 30,000-40,000 had been sold by the company since its inception.

“There’s a very good chance … within a 100km section, you’re going to spot our caravans on the road.”

What was next for the company after the Bundaberg expansion was still a question.

Mr Green said it would go “where the market tells us to go”.

“The postcodes tell us where the biggest buyers come from,” he said.

Nationwide was the “end goal”.

“Where we will end up next, who knows?”

Originally published as Country roots of Australian empire: Inside the rise and rise of Carl Green