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 Their route became known as "The Nairn Way". The firm continued, in various guises, until In , their doctor 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.
After the war, the brothers first traded in ex-army vehicles, then established a motor dealership in 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 , the British consul in Damascus, C.
Palmer, asked them to examine the possibility of crossing the Syrian Desert by car. Plans for a rail link to the Mediterranean coast had faltered and the air route to Cairo was infrequent and expensive. In April , the Nairns made the first of six trial runs from Damascus to Baghdad. The first trip took them three days for a journey of kilometers 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.
