Our closest industrial precinct, about 4.5 km from the yard
Northgate is the closest industrial precinct to the EZ Trans depot, about 4.5 kilometres and roughly seven minutes from Castle Street, Kedron. We carry chilled, frozen and ambient freight for Northgate, Banyo and Nudgee food producers, bakeries and cold stores, which is what makes genuine same-day and short-notice cover practical here.
Northgate is the closest industrial precinct to our depot. About 4.5 kilometres separate our Castle Street yard from the warehouses off Toombul Road, which is roughly seven minutes of driving and rarely more than fifteen even in the worst of the Sandgate Road afternoon. For local food manufacturers, bakeries and cold stores that changes what refrigerated transport can realistically do: a vehicle can be on your dock inside the time it takes to finish palletising the order.
That short leg is also the reason short-notice work is a genuine offer in Northgate rather than a slogan. A vehicle finishing a run at Kedron can be repositioned here without burning an hour of the day, which is not true of Rocklea or Wacol. Distance is the whole advantage, so this page is built around what you can do with it.
Most transport quoting hides a fixed cost that has nothing to do with the freight: the time it takes a vehicle to get to you empty. Over 30 or 40 kilometres that positioning leg dictates how early a driver must leave, how firm a collection window can be, and whether a late order can be picked up at all. Across 4.5 kilometres it almost disappears.
Three things follow from that. Collection windows can be tighter, because a seven minute repositioning drive absorbs a delay that a 45 minute one does not. Cut-offs can sit later in the day, since the vehicle does not need a head start. And cover for a failure on your side, a truck that will not start or a driver who calls in sick, becomes a same-day possibility rather than a next-day apology. None of it is guaranteed capacity, because fleet availability still governs, but the geography is on your side.
The same proximity helps when freight needs to pause. Product collected in Northgate can go into chilled, ambient or dry storage at the depot minutes after leaving your dock, which suits producers whose production run finishes before the customer will receive it. Where the shortage is cold space on your own site rather than transport, our refrigerated rentals are a separate option worth asking about.
This corner of the northside has been a food processing district for decades, and the building stock reflects it: large single-tenant plants with proper docks, mixed among smaller units housing bakeries, commercial kitchens, packers and distributors. Nudgee Road carries the biggest of them, including the long-established cannery site that anchors the area’s food manufacturing history, while the smaller operators cluster in the industrial streets between Toombul Road and the rail line.
Bakeries and prepared food producers dominate the early bookings, because their finished product has to reach cafes, retailers and food service customers before trading starts. Dairy, smallgoods and chilled ready-meal lines make up much of the rest, alongside dry and ambient pallets that ride with the chilled freight or move on our dry and ambient vehicles.
Proximity gives you options that would not be practical from further out. These are the four we set up most often here, and the differences are worth reading before you decide which to ask us to quote.
| Option | What it suits | How it runs | Lead time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scheduled run | Steady outbound volume with fixed customer receiving windows | Same slot each nominated day, vehicle pre-cooled before it reaches your dock | Set up once, then standing |
| Same-day pickup | Orders confirmed during the day, retail restocks, a missed dispatch | Booked in the morning for an afternoon collection and delivery | Usually a few hours, subject to fleet availability |
| Short-notice cover | Your own vehicle off the road, a driver unavailable, an unexpected order | Dispatched from Kedron about 4.5 kilometres away when a suitable vehicle is free | Same day where capacity allows |
| Early start or overnight | Bakery, dairy and food service deliveries needed before trade opens | Loaded the evening before or collected pre-dawn on an agreed route | Arranged in advance |
Customers who start on same-day bookings often move to a scheduled run once the volume settles, because a fixed slot prices better and takes the daily phone call out of their morning. If you want a single urgent movement instead, that is express courier work and is quoted job by job.
Later than most of Brisbane, and that is worth being precise about rather than vague. The limiting factor for an afternoon collection is almost never the run from Kedron to Northgate, which holds up even in peak because it stays on Sandgate Road. It is the delivery end: what time the receiving customer closes their dock, and how far away they are.
So the honest answer is that we can usually collect from Northgate significantly later than from a southside suburb for the same delivery deadline, and we work the cut-off out from the drop rather than the pickup. For deliveries staying on the northside or into the CBD the window is generous. For a Logan or Gold Coast drop the same afternoon, the cut-off tightens quickly and we will tell you where it sits before you commit to the order.
We do not promise guaranteed times on any run. What we will do is quote a window we expect to hold and tell you plainly when a request is too tight, which is a more useful answer than agreeing and failing. Regular collections also make the depot leg predictable, a point covered in our piece on warehousing and supply chain efficiency.
A short run is not an excuse for a thin paper trail. Under the Food Standards Code, food carried under temperature control has to be kept cold at 5C or colder, or hot at 60C or hotter, and a four kilometre leg is covered by that requirement in exactly the same way as a four hundred kilometre one. Frozen product carries its own set point, agreed with you rather than assumed.
For Northgate producers the other question is accreditation. Safe Food Production Queensland sets out that accreditation is a legal requirement under the Food Production (Safety) Act 2000 for certain activities, including transporting meat, eggs, dairy, seafood or horticulture produce in Queensland. Which scheme applies depends on your product, and it is your accreditation to hold, not ours to claim on your behalf. We plan the run around the handling and temperature requirements of the freight and give you the records for the leg we carried.
On handling practice, the Australian Food and Grocery Council released the Australian Cold Chain Guidelines in 2017 to help suppliers maintain food safety and quality through handling, transport and storage. If your customers audit you against something similar, tell us at quoting stage so the pre-cooling, loading order and temperature recording on your run are set up to suit.
Getting to us from Northgate takes about 4.5 kilometres. Head south on Sandgate Road, continue through Wooloowin to Kedron and turn into Castle Street, roughly seven minutes without traffic and around twelve in the afternoon. Full directions to our Kedron depot include the yard entrance and where a rigid can turn.
Every area we cover is listed on the service areas index.
The drive is about 4.5 kilometres and roughly seven minutes from our Kedron depot, or a little over ten in afternoon traffic on Sandgate Road. The real variable is not distance but whether a suitable vehicle is free at the time you call, so short-notice requests are confirmed rather than assumed.
Often, yes. Being the nearest precinct to our depot means a replacement vehicle can be repositioned quickly, which is why short-notice cover is a real service here. It depends on fleet availability on the day, so call as early as you can and we will tell you straight away whether we can take it.
Yes. Banyo around Tufnell Road and Earnshaw Road, and Nudgee out towards the Gateway Motorway, are close enough to Northgate to be combined into one collection round. That keeps the cost down compared with separate jobs and reduces the total time freight spends off its set point.
Early starts are standard for bakery and prepared food work in this area, because the product has to be with cafes, retailers and food service customers before they open. Routes are agreed in advance so the driver is not being directed at 4am, and freight can be loaded the previous evening where that suits your production.
Yes. The vehicle is pre-cooled before it arrives and the set point and product temperature are recorded at collection and delivery regardless of distance. A four kilometre leg falls under the same Food Standards Code temperature requirements as a long-distance run, and a loading dock in summer is where most heat gain occurs anyway.
Being seven minutes away only helps if you use it, so tell us what needs to move and when the receiving end closes. We will quote it and say honestly whether the window works. You can book a collection online or phone the depot.
