New haulage firm registered at Norrbruck

A new name went up on the freight registers of the country yesterday, when Hallin Haulage was formally founded at Norrbruck by Petra Hallin. The registration was completed in the morning, before a light rain came in off the river and settled over the yards along the eastern approach to the town, where the firm has taken a plot for its first depot.

Ms Hallin, who signed the founding papers standing at a trestle table set up for the occasion because the office proper will not have a roof until next month, told this newspaper that she had been planning the move for some time. "I have driven other people's lorries long enough," she said. "Now I shall drive my own, and other people will drive them for me, and we shall see how that suits." She declined to say how many vehicles the firm would start with, only that the first was already parked outside, its cab still smelling of new paint.

Norrbruck has long served as a staging point for goods moving between the interior and the coast, and the town's carters have watched the trade change hands more than once in living memory. A woman selling coffee from a cart at the edge of the yard said she had seen three such firms come and go at that same crossing over the years, though she would not be drawn on whether this one would last longer than the others. "They all start with a clean cab and big talk," she said. "We shall see who is still parking here at Christmas."

The founding itself was a modest affair. There was no ribbon, and no band, only Ms Hallin, a clerk from the registry who asked not to be named, and a dog belonging to nobody in particular that sat by the trestle table through the whole of the signing and was given a biscuit for its trouble. The clerk stamped the papers twice, once for the firm's own file and once for the register, and remarked that it was, in his experience, an unusually plain morning for what he called "the birth of a company", most founders preferring to bring at least a photographer.

Asked what the firm would carry, Ms Hallin was direct. "Whatever needs carrying and pays for the diesel," she said. "I am not proud about the cargo. I am proud about the delivery." She said the depot would take on drivers from the town before looking further afield, and that she expected the yard to be busy within the month, weather and permits allowing.

The Grand Chancellor, Nadja Maller, made no particular remark on the founding of Hallin Haulage, though her office has spoken before, in general terms, of the country's need for haulage capacity along its eastern routes. "Every new firm on the road is a firm we did not have to build ourselves," she said last month, in a passage that had nothing to do with Norrbruck but which readers of this paper's business notices will recognise as the sort of thing said of firms like this one. Ms Hallin, for her part, said she had not sought the Chancellor's blessing and did not expect it. "I asked the bank, not the government," she said.

By the middle of the afternoon the rain had stopped and the trestle table had been folded away. Ms Hallin was last seen walking the length of the new plot with the clerk's copy of the papers rolled under one arm, pacing out, by the account of the coffee-seller, where the second lorry might one day stand.

Elsewhere in this issue: the Sudfurt library opens public access to the network, with the Ministry of Chronology's search notice displayed beside the terminals.

Read the full issue of 20 September 2026.