Nairn Transport Company

The Nairn Transport Company was a pioneering motor transport company that operated a trans-desert route from Beirut, Haifa and Damascus to Baghdad, and back again, from 1923. Their route became known as "The Nairn Way". The firm continued, in various guises, until 1959.

The company was formed by Norman Nairn (1894–1968) and his brother Gerald (1897–1980) of Blenheim, New Zealand who had served under Allenby in the British Army in the Middle East during World War I. In 1905, their father had been one of the first in New Zealand to own a motor car, a Reo, and the brothers had a successful motorcycle dealership there prior to World War I. Among other brands, they were the sole agents for Harley-Davidson.

After the war, the brothers first traded in ex-army vehicles, then established a motor dealership in 1919 but it was not very successful and they decided to operate a taxi service between Beirut and Haifa with the cars they couldn't sell. There followed a process of experimentation with different vehicles and the brothers often came into conflict with the owners of horse-drawn vehicles to whose business they were a threat. In 1920 they began a mail and passenger service between Beirut and Haifa.

In 1923, the British consul in Damascus, C.E.S. Palmer, asked them to examine the possibility of crossing the Syrian Desert by car. Iraq was under a British League of Nations mandate at the time and a quicker route home would a great advantage to the British staff there. Plans for a rail link to the Mediterranean coast had faltered and the air route to Cairo was infrequent and expensive. The Nairns also received encouragement from local traders who were using camels which were slow and liable to attack by tribesmen. One was local sheik and gold smuggler Mohammad Ibn Bassam who had made trial runs of different routes using his own cars.

In April 1923, the Nairns made the first of six trial runs from Damascus to Baghdad. The first trip took them three days for a journey of 880 kilometers (550 miles) using a Buick, an Oldsmobile and a Lancia. Having demonstrated the feasibility of the plan, Norman Nairn proposed to British officials in Baghdad that the brothers start a postal service between Damascus and Baghdad. The British agreed, as did the French in Damascus, and the French even provided gold to pay-off desert tribes to ensure safe transit. The brothers signed a five-year contract with the Iraqi government to transport mail from Baghdad to Damascus and Haifa, and back again.

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