It started on a front lawn.
One trailer. West Mackay. 2021. The problem was simple — getting a trailer shouldn’t mean working around someone else’s schedule.
The second job with worse hours
I bought my first trailer in 2021 with a simple idea — hire it out and see what happens. I listed it on Facebook Marketplace and rented it from my front yard in West Mackay. It worked. But I had to be there for every single hire. 7am pickup? There. Saturday afternoon? There. That’s not a business — that’s a second job with worse hours.
Padlocks, then a platform
The fix started with coded padlocks — send the customer a code, and the trailer hires itself whether I’m there or not. By five trailers it needed to be a proper system, so we built one: bookings, payments, lock access, all automated. Today that platform runs the whole operation — fleet tracking, maintenance, customer support. No calls, no counters, no one in the driveway. Just instant trailers, any hour.
One conversation
The first big partnership came from a cold walk-in. I walked into a Mackay City store, spoke to the manager on the floor, and within weeks we had trailers across four Porters Group locations. Once businesses saw the model — trailers on their site, fully managed by us, earning them income with zero effort — every new town was the same playbook, refined a little each time. Shopping centres, servos, hardware stores, sporting clubs: Mackay to the Whitsundays, Townsville to Emerald, Gladstone to Biloela.
“This business gets better one step at a time. Every location, every trailer, every system — repetition, refinement, and showing up. Repetition is the mother of skill. We’re not done yet.”
— Matt Cole, Founder & Owner
