Owner/Driver #339

“It is what it is, so you just have to do what you can,” Phillip
says with flat acceptance. The bitterness dwells deep and is
rarely exposed.
“Not much good whinging about. Or not whinging too much,”
he snickers.
Jenny drives him to and from the shed most days and
when it’s quiet around the office he’s often feeling his way
around the old trucks or sometimes wandering among parked
trucks and trailers in the yard. He’s never far away from the
machinery that is, and will always be, such a foundation of his
life. Critically though, technology plays its part with a highly
advanced phone which allows him to easily source people and
information and as he puts it: “To just stay in touch.”
Quiet for a few moments, he says candidly: “The worst thing, I
suppose, is the disappointment.
“It’s disappointing and it gets frustrating that I can’t give
Quinten a hand when he needs it. If I could still see, I could do
a load for him now and again, give him a break, or just do a bit
of work on a truck or trailer.
“That’s a big disappointment because he’s had to do a lot on
his own. I know he’s capable and he can do lots of things but it
would’ve been good to help him. Besides, I miss driving. A lot.”
Fire and Pestilence
By 2016, the family company was effectively finished and
it’s a seemingly untroubled Quinten who shrugs when
asked if his father’s condition and the wind-down of
Bruce Mathie & Sons put added pressure on him or his
own ambitions. Collecting his thoughts, the response was
typically firm.
“It was difficult with everything that was happening then,
but Dad’s condition was what it was and we couldn’t change
anything, as frustrating and upsetting as it was.
“I think about it a lot, for sure, and it was absolutely
disappointing for both of us.
“Suddenly, all that ability was stripped away. For 23 years I’d
seen what he could do and learned so much from him, then to
have it taken away wasn’t easy. But it was an awful lot harder
for Dad, and Mum too. No doubt.”
As for the pressure, he says simply: “There was pressure, I
guess, but you do what you have to do. I’ve always been taught
to just get on with it.” And that’s exactly what he’s done.
Yet, he is equally quick to mention that he’s not the only
Mathie of his generation to run trucks, with cousins Luke and
Heath also operating their own trucks.
“It must be in the blood,” he says with a smirk.
With the inevitability of Bruce Mathie & Sons coming to an
end, the opportunity in late 2013 to add the fuel industry to
existing logging and woodchip work was snapped up with
Quinten’s acquisition of a fuel haulage operation that included
a Detroit Series 60-powered Freightliner Argosy and two
tankers.
“I can picture it and I can feel it. I
can picture what they are and what
they need to be.”
Top: Hauling north out of Cobargo,
the south coast village is still
recovering from the tragedy of
bushfires. Kenworth K200 is the
truck of choice for QBM’s B-double
tanker combinations. South of
home base at Narooma, B-doubles
are still limited to an overall
length of 19 metres on the Princes
Highway
Above: For several months from
late 2019 to early 2020, several
Mathie tankers were committed to
keeping water supplies up to fire
appliances on the ground and in
the air
It was, he resolutely confirms, “a good move” and while the
Freightliner cab-over is something of an odd-bod among its
much preferred Kenworth and Western Star counterparts, it
at least continues to earn a respectable living for QBM. On the
other hand, with the Series 60 EGR engine proving typically
troublesome, it was ultimately replaced with an ISX Cummins.
Today, QBM operates eight trucks – three Western Stars, the
Argosy and four Kenworths consisting of two T9s including
his original T908, and two K200 cab-overs coupled to 19 metre
B-double tanker sets.
The specialist demands of logs, woodchips and fuel haulage
mean most units work in one form of freight or the other but
a couple such as his original ’908 and an immensely loyal 1997
Western Star ‘Heritage’ model (nowadays largely a back-up
truck) are equipped to swap from one application to the other.
Asked what workload dominates the business, he says the
ratios vary.
“The dynamics of fuel and logs are entirely different and
they can change quickly depending on circumstances.”
The last 15 months or so have, for instance, been particularly
tough on both applications, starting with the devastating
fires of late 2019 and early 2020 which had a blatant impact on
logging operations.
“The whole south coast was alight from Nowra down to the
border,” Quinten explains as we drive through the small town
of Cobargo where a year earlier, fires took a severe toll on life
and property. Today, the town still carries the scars and there’s
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