In February 2002, National Rail's freight operations and rollingstock, jointly owned by the Federal, New South Wales and Victorian Governments, were combined with FreightCorp, owned by the New South Wales Government,[1] and sold to a joint venture between Patrick Corporation and Toll Holdings, trading as Pacific National.

[2] In February 2004, Pacific National purchased Australian Transport Network, operator of ATN Access and AN Tasrail.

[6] The company was required to provide a "starter pack" of locomotives, wagons, train paths, and freight terminals for a third party rail operator on the east-west route across the Nullarbor Plain.

To fulfil that, Pacific National sold nine refurbished G class locomotives to competitor SCT Logistics to allow it to operate its own services.

[17] Initially the governments refused to act on the issue claiming they would not be "held to mercy" by Pacific National, owned by Toll and Patrick Corporation, "which are extremely profitable multi-national companies".

[20] In December 2007, Pacific National announced plans to sell or close its grain transport and Portlink rural container business operations in Victoria, selling or closing Patrick's intermodal freight business in Tasmania, and downsizing to a bare minimum Pacific National's grain operations across New South Wales.