Owner/Driver #339
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has become a loyal and much-admired friend. In<br />
at least one instance, many years back, he was also<br />
a generous coach as he handed over the wheel of a<br />
fully loaded log truck to teach the finer features of<br />
operating Spicer’s versatile but somewhat quirky<br />
20-speed transmission. It was a classic example<br />
of ‘easy when you know how’, and the lesson was<br />
never forgotten.<br />
By the time of Quinten Bruce Mathie’s arrival in<br />
September 1986, his father and uncles (Kevin, Gill<br />
and Stuart) had in separate ways steadily built the<br />
family business into arguably the most prominent<br />
logging enterprise on the NSW south coast.<br />
The mainstay of the business had long been the<br />
handling of logs with bulldozers and loaders but<br />
the purchase in 1981 of a second-hand White Road<br />
Boss added haulage to the operation and with<br />
Phillip and Gill initially doing much of the driving,<br />
trucks quickly developed into an integral part of<br />
the business.<br />
The demise of White, however, while especially<br />
disappointing to Phillip, posed the question of<br />
‘which truck next, Kenworth or White’s Canadian<br />
cousin, the newly introduced Western Star?’<br />
With so much White in its heritage, Western Star<br />
won with the Mathie purchase in 1984 of a new<br />
Cummins-powered Cheyenne 4800 model. An<br />
almost identical unit followed a year later and it<br />
was a confident Phillip who said at the time: “There<br />
were a few early doubts about whether the Western<br />
Star company would last long in Australia … but the<br />
two we have are giving us a good run.”<br />
While Western Star’s future back then was still<br />
questionable as various negotiations between<br />
Australian interests led by high profile Brisbanebased<br />
businessman Terry Peabody and the brand’s<br />
Canadian connections continued into the 1990s,<br />
Mathie’s allegiance to both the truck and<br />
Cummins engines remained rock solid. As time<br />
and toil continued to show, the allegiance was well<br />
founded but somewhat surprisingly, Terry would<br />
come to play a significant role in Phillip’s future,<br />
well beyond trucks. A role that, for some, may seem<br />
completely foreign to a Peabody reputation for cold,<br />
uncompromisingly tough business tactics.<br />
In the interim, however, and in the middle of a<br />
global recession in the early ’90s, Terry shocked the<br />
socks off everyone when he bought Western Star<br />
Trucks Incorporated, which included, of course,<br />
its manufacturing facility in Kelowna, British<br />
Columbia.<br />
It was a decisive swoop which shored up his<br />
Australian investment by quickly returning the<br />
Canadian offshoot of the former White Motor<br />
Corporation to a financially viable and respected<br />
builder of high quality trucks.<br />
So viable, in fact, that in 2000 he sold the<br />
whole Western Star operation – with the<br />
notable exception of the Australian business –<br />
to German giant Daimler Trucks North America.<br />
Yet, throughout much of Western Star’s local<br />
history, a friendship was quietly developing,<br />
which to many may even now seem unusual.<br />
Indeed, it’s a very broad chasm both personally<br />
and professionally from the private planes and<br />
calculating character of wheelin’ dealin’ billionaire<br />
businessmen like Terry, to the truck cabs and<br />
workshops of hard-edged men like Phillip.<br />
There is, however, a mutual respect and<br />
instinctive trust between these two entirely<br />
different men that is almost certainly at odds with<br />
the perceptions, and even understanding, of most<br />
people. Yet, on those occasions when the two are<br />
in each other’s company, and long after Terry’s<br />
involvement with Western Star has ended, the<br />
mutual regard remains as obvious as it is genuine.<br />
Equally obvious, it’s no surprise that the only new<br />
ownerdriver.com.au<br />
APRIL 2021 65