Truck Art has sold its Edward Street head office to independent fuel retailer APCO and will sink the proceeds into a 10-year lease and full refurbishment of a site in Bomen. 

Owner Terry Gibbs, who started Truck Art in Saxon Street in 1987, is relocating his heavy vehicle smash repairs operation to be nearer the livestock trailer arm of the business, which employs three times as many staff as it did six years ago. 

Mr Gibbs said the proposed Bomen freight hub, known as the Riverina Intermodal Freight and Logistics (RIFL) hub, would turbocharge the industrial park.

All three tiers of government has committed a combined $57.7 for Bomen roadworks to improve access to the proposed freight hub site, although council’s preferred commercial partner has not comment publicly on the venture since July. 

“I’m expecting big trucking companies to have bases here in time to come, purely because of the rail infrastructure they’re putting in,” Mr Gibbs said. 

“The expanding industrial zone will create new factories and they'll need trucks.”

The Riverina’s largest privately owned line haul operations company, Rodney’s Transport, occupies 50 acres within the Bomen Industrial Estate with another 150 acres of storage. 

Mr Gibbs has called for a Sturt Highway truck bypass north of the CBD, crossing both the Eunony and Gobbagombalin bridges with access to Bomen via the Olympic Highway and Byrnes Road. 

“Wagga could be another third bigger in 10 to 15 years, which would see a significant increase in local traffic alone,” he said.

“With the amount of traffic building up along Edward Street and the expected increase in the number of trucks, the bypass has to happen.”

Community lobby group Committee 4 Wagga would prefer a bypass skirting the city’s southern fringes, as the Eunony Bridge route crosses the Murrumbidgee River floodplain, which could force the road to close during flood events.

It’s also argued the northern route would choke the Gobbagombalin Bridge, which has reportedly reached capacity due to ongoing residential expansion in Estella and Boorooma.