Liam Quinn's default setting is talk: the Shipton, North Yorks-based
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owner-operator has an opinion (and an anecdote) for everything. Not that this is a bad thing by any stretch — Quinn has never been afraid of haranguing CM with his opinions on the latest issues of the day — and it made our day with him fly by.
As part of this profile on Quinns Transport, the company Quinn founded with his wife Sally back in 1991, the gauntlet was thrown down to CM to spend a day in the cab with our subject and see what his life is like on the road. We won't lie, and we won't tell you anything hundreds of owner-operators don't already know: it's tough, it's tiring and it's frustrating. But ultimately, trucking is in the blood.
Quinns Transport specialises in bulk tipping and runs a fleet of three vehicles. One (a Scania R540) is driven by Quinn himself, the others by Stuart Wyril and Mark Downes, working on a variety of contracts for operators ..T&J Ward and Allen W Brown. Quinn did put on a fourth wagon a couple of years ago, bur struggled to find the right driver so took the vehicle off the road.
But it is impossible to separate the company from the man behind it. Quinn started his life in trucking following in the footsteps of his father, Patrick Quinn. His dad was an owner-driver and Quinn admits it "obviously influenced" what he wanted to do in life. So he left school at 16 and got a job with Yorkshire firm Flowers Transport, where he trained as a traffic clerk. However, it is best to leave him to fill in the gaps...
"1 was training up to be a transport manager and I worked in their office until I was 20. But being the typical hot-headed person I am... Flowers shipped in a transport manager from north Wales, but he was not straight about things. Basically he did not want me in the office because I was a disruptive influence. I ended up leaving three weeks before they got rid of him, and my dad said he would put on a wagon for me when I was 21," he says.
Quinn ended up driving for his father's firm from 1978 to 1982, but in the early '80s the recession hit Thatcher's Britain and work from Yorkshire confectionery giant Rowntree's dried up. The crunch time came and his father had to lay him off.
Lucky break
"1 was hoping I would work for him when things picked up, but I went back to Flowers Transport and finished up packaging KitKats. I wanted to go back on the road, but I was 25 at the time. By luck more than judgement, I was back at Flowers again and working my way up to becoming one of their youngest artic drivers at 25 — which in those days was rare." he explains.
It was around this time that he married Sally and the foundations for Quinns Transport were laid.The next step proves the adage about business being about who you know, not what you know. He had been running a little 1626 Mercedes-Benz and doing his first bulk tipping contract of grain for local firm Kenneth Wilson (Quinn says his dad had never been in bulk tipping, and ironically it was a market he never really wanted to enter), but he was looking to upgrade and enter the world of ownerdriving properly.
"This is where I always think I have lived a charmed life. I went to [local dealer] David Taylor, who had known my dad for years, and said I was looking for a new trailer, but could not afford it. David Taylor gave me the finance
on a 10% deposit. He said to me: 'I have known you since you were a lad and I know 1 will he able to sell this trailer when you've finished with it] and get my money hack; Over the years, I wonder where else I would have been if I had not met someone like him. My dad was a dead straight type of bloke. When I was 27 and getting the chance to set up on my own, they always knew I was Pat Quinn's lad."
Family business
Quinn's father also offered security on the finance on the deal and in return, when Quinns Transport was formed as a limited company in 1991, he gave his father one share in the business and made him a director: "He was right chuffed when I made him a director — he'd never even owned a house until he was 40 and he was one of 10 kids. 1 gave him a dividend of £8.60 after the first year and he was so proud he framed the cheque."
Sadly Pat Quinn died two years ago, aged 83, but he was able to see the company grow to run some of the most distinctive tipper wagons on the roads of North Yorkshire and the North-East. While the silver and Hue gripes turn into headlines Take, for example, the law that limits HGVs to 40mph on single carriageway A-roads. "Sitting in the cab. it is easy to see how the law needs to change: with the vehicle restricted to 40mph, cars and vans bunch up behind us" Quinn points out that the more the traffic bunches together, the more likely drivers are to get closer to the person in front of them, get impatient and make mistakes. Simply increasing the limit to 50mph which he points out is incredibly safe thanks to advances in HGV braking systems would allow the traffic to flow freely and cut accidents.
Speed limits
The Conservatives backed raising the limit in the election and local politician Robert Goodwill, MP for Whitby and Scarborough, told CM in November 2009 that raising the limit would -reduce the number of accidents caused by frustrated motorists trying to overtake at dangerous spots". Goodwill was part of the shadow transport team at the time, but since the Conservatives were forced into coalition with the Liberal Democrats to secure election victory, Goodwill has disappeared from the front benches and his idea remains in legislative limbo.
-It is a real shame about Goodwill: laments Quinn."It is about time that somebody on our side had a say."
Truck parks
Another of Quinn's hobby horses is the state of British truck parks. "They should be more like those in America," he says, after our 45-minute rest in a truckstop on the Al, "If you drive a truck in this country, you are treated like some kind of leper. What we need are truckstops every 30 miles. providing food at a reasonable price. If they had a proper network, trucks could be kept away from motorway services. You do not want to be paying for McDonald's in service stations This lack of focus is just embarrassing.
-The government is coming up with some good ideas. but they are going to have to be upfront about what they are going to do with their investment in infrastructure. They need to think about the drivers who are going to these places," he insists It is worth noting that is almost a year to the day (23 November) since the Department for Transport unveiled its plans to overhaul truck parking and very little has been pushed forward by the government to denote progress.
Finally, spend any time in Quinn's company and you will inevitably hear his opinion on the Working Time Directive. Earlier this year, Quinn wrote a letter to CM calling for the 48-hour week to be abandoned and a change to domestic rules to help British haulage contractors. His argument is a simple one, but he puts it forward with compelling and arresting force. The limit on the number of hours a driver is allowed to work gives a driver no chance of working hard for a living to build up his own business and earn money in a low-paid environment.
"Working time directives from the EU have removed the basic human right of employees to have the choice of being able to work extra hours in order to provide for their family in the manner in which they see fit, and for employers to remain competitive," he stresses Quinn is not naive enough to think that the law is not there for safety reasons and he fully accepts there is a need to stop people (and he singles out foreign operators and foreign national drivers) from working "stupid hours" at a risk to the public, but there is a distinct gap between the application of common sense and the letter of the law.
Nothing bugs him more than VOSA officials scrutinising time sheets for breaches of the minutes they work (and CM has seen Quinn in his cab being equally diligent about recording his working time hours). Handing out fines for drivers who go minutes over time is fruitless and creates aggravation between law enforcement and professional drivers, he argues.
Furthermore, why punish a driver for driving an additional 20 minutes in his week, just so he can get home to spend a weekend with his family in a warm bed, rather than in an unsafe lay-by? All these rules do nothing to encourage new blood into the profession of being a driver or taking a step further and becoming an owner-operator the kind of small business the government is so keen to increase in the UK.
"Road haulage is a pretty transparent business," he says. Well, if that's true then Quinns Transport is the crystal clear example of the application of hard work, willpower and spirit. •