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Employee Profile:
A Look at Dirk Parkins
By Mike Koch
When a Land Rover enthusiast dedicates over twenty years of his life
to working at Rovers North, it’s only proper to explore his first Land
Rover experience and move forward from there.
After growing up outside of Philadelphia, Dirk moved to
southern Vermont to learn how to work with draft horses. Following
that, he moved to the Adirondacks of New York to log with horses.
But before long, it was back to Vermont for Dirk when his previous
employers moved north to Fairfax, where they bought a sugar bush
that Dirk logged for them. Fairfax is the next town north of Westford.
To this day, neither town possesses a single traffic light; they’re on the
rural side. His employers in Fairfax drove a 109” station wagon,
which they bought from Mark Letorney. Dirk admired the Rover and
said to himself: “That’s a great vehicle that’s meant to be worked on.
I’ve got to get a Land Rover!” He contacted Mark and got word of a
1970 88” that was for sale from a local who had done some welding
for Mark. It was the summer of 1984 when Dirk acquired and rebuilt
his first Land Rover. “I wanted to learn how to work on it and in
exchange for doing some stuff around here, Mark taught me how to
work on a Land Rover and the rest is history.” Unintentionally, he
rolled the 88”, but naturally rebuilt it. Since his first day of employment
at Rovers North in December of 1984, Dirk has held an assortment
of positions including: turning a wrench, boxing parts in the
shipping department, answering the phones in sales, and working in
the receiving department also. Currently, Dirk is Parts Manager, “trying
to maintain a constant flow of parts from the UK through our
doors.” When he’s not busy at Rovers North, Dirk is very active with
his wonderful family.
A 1967 IIA 109” military was Dirk’s second Rover, which
happens to be his favorite Land Rover because “ it was built to the
highest standards and simplest to work on.” Dirk’s next project was
to rebuild a 1968 IIA that he gave to a friend as a wedding present.
Wearing a smile, he told me that he ended up owning that one twice.
Presently, Dirk drives a 109”/110 hybrid (also rebuilt, rolled, and
rebuilt), which he mainly uses as a vacation vehicle when he’s not
using it in the woods near his home in Norwich, Vermont.
After asking around the office for a good Dirk story, I came
across this rather riveting one. Back in 1985, Rovers North was
importing brand new Range Rovers before they were available for
sale in North America. The Range Rovers were shipped from the UK,
across the North Atlantic, in 40’ containers. Once the containers
reached Westford on the back of a truck, the Rovers were backed
down a pair of ramps and into our parking lot, which was very
confined at the time. Mark was cautiously backing a shiny new Range
Rover down the set of ramps when suddenly one ramp snapped.
Immediately, the axles of the Range Rover articulated to match the
precarious angle, as they were designed to perform. Unable to exit
the vehicle, because of the consequences of it rolling over, Mark was
trapped in the Range Rover. Bear in mind that there was a
U.S. Customs agent overseeing this circus. Dirk disappeared
momentarily but returned in an instant, chainsaw screaming
as he quickly cut pieces of lumber to stack up under the cracked
ramp. Mark and the Range Rover backed down on to terra
firma without harm.
To summarize, I asked Dirk the following:
How have Land Rovers influenced your life:
“They’re the most consistent part for twenty plus years now.”
That’s a significant amount of Land Rover experience and surely
the reason he’s had the answer to every esoteric Series tech question
I’ve asked him in the five years that we’ve worked together.
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