Wendy Fennell, owner and managing director of South Australian softwood harvest and haulage business Fennell Forestry, has been named a finalist in the 2026 Outstanding Contributor Award, the Australian Trucking Association’s national recognition for individual service to road transport. That is according to ATA chair Mark Parry, who announced the finalist list on May 1 ahead of the association’s gala awards dinner on Hamilton Island on June 5, the closing night of Trucking Australia 2026.
The Australian Trucking Association represents 60,000 businesses and 200,000 people across Australia’s road freight industry, and runs the Outstanding Contributor Award each year to recognise individual service to the sector. The 2026 finalist field was selected by an independent panel chaired by former ATA chair David Simon.
Mark Parry said the finalists demonstrated qualities the broader industry should learn from, with the panel weighing both individual commitment and contribution to the wider transport community. “The finalists have shown enormous commitment to their individual businesses and the community,” Parry said.
Fennell sits on the South Australian Road Transport Association board and was the driving force behind South Australia’s MC Licence Pilot Program. She has also run the Fennell Forestry Truck Pull Challenge for more than a decade, with the event raising more than $200,000 for children’s charity Variety SA across that run.
Fennell Forestry was founded in 1989 and runs softwood harvest and haulage across the Green Triangle, South Australia and Western Australia, with line haul services extending from the southeast through to the west and log transport from the Adelaide Hills also on its books. Three decades of softwood corridor work has anchored a Kenworth-led fleet, with the Kenworth K220 model the platform Fennell has singled out for its driver ergonomics and dashboard layout.
Trucking Australia 2026 runs through to June 5 on Hamilton Island, with the ATA’s Outstanding Contributor Award winners announced at the foundation sponsors gala dinner that evening, and Fennell among the 2026 finalists nominated by the David Simon-led independent panel.
