transport-rider, noun

Origin:
AfrikaansShow more Probably translation of Afrikaans transportryer, transport transport, carriage, conveyance + ryer rider, driver.
historical
A carrier of goods by wagon; karweier; kurveyor; transport driver. See also to ride transport (ride sense 1 b).
1850 R.G.G. Cumming Hunter’s Life (1902) 10The Dutchmen along their road being very unfriendly and inhospitable to the English transport-riders.
1871 R.M.R. in Cape Monthly Mag. III. Dec. 373The Company..created a class of transport-riders, and made it worth their while to engage in the transport of copper ore from the mines to the sea-port.
1873 F. Boyle To Cape for Diamonds 248A black transport rider, going homeward with his team, came in at ten o’clock the other night, drenched to the skin.
1882 J. Nixon Among BoersThe transport rider learns which are the best grasses, how to distinguish signs of water, what soil suits cattle and what sheep or ostriches.
1896 R. Wallace Farming Indust. of Cape Col. 247The tsetse fly..is the fatal pest which destroys the horses of big-game hunters, and the oxen of up-country transport riders.
1912 W. Westrup Land of To-Morrow 347You may have heard that my second wife..has eloped with a Dutch transport rider?
1924 E.T. Jollie Real Rhodesia (1971) 131The transport rider is essentially a South African type, for no other country has either the special conditions which called him into being or the particular breed of man who could endure the life.
1937 C. Birkby Zulu Journey 190He became a transport-rider working between Natal and the diamond fields of Kimberley.
1940 F.B. Young City of Gold 45The destruction of bullocks by the disease had pushed up transport rates, so that a single journey of five hundred miles from the coast to Kimberley brought more than a hundred pounds to the transport rider’s pocket.
1958 A. Jackson Trader on Veld 37Whether with donkeys or with oxen, one class of the community usually did fairly well, and that was the transport rider, whose grandsons and great-grandsons are today doing a very similar, though easier and faster job with motor-trucks and lorries.
1968 K. McMagh Dinner of Herbs 27All roads led to Kimberley in the early eighteen-seventies, when transport riders made good money transporting machinery and other goods to the bustling diamond town before the coming of the railway.
1977 F.G. Butler Karoo Morning 200Father sought out Mr Gunning, one of the last transport riders, whose three ancient wagons rested among the pepper trees on the river bank, and whose thirty-six donkeys grazed on the commonage.
1980 S. Afr. Panorama Dec. 44Lonely mounds marked the end of the road for the luckless hunters or transport riders who had succumbed to malaria.
1983 S. Afr. Panorama Apr. 18Transport riders plying their trade between Durban and Johannesburg took tree seed with them to plant in spots where they outspanned for the night.
1991 Style Nov. 67His father — alternately a teacher, transport rider and miner.
A carrier of goods by wagon; karweier; kurveyor; transport driver.
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