Barry Whitney

Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame at Reunion 2004.

Even though he started his life as a tradesman, housepainter, it didn't take Barry long to ditch his paint brush in favour of a steering wheel and a long and illustrious career as a truck driver, owner/driver, and now respected transport industry journalist.
Born in Sydney in 1944, by the early 1960s a young Barry Whitney had landed his first truck-driving job working for a nursery crisscrossing Sydney's northern suburbs delivering seedlings and assorted sands, soils and garden supplies.
Not content with greening Sydney's backyards, by 1964 Barry had graduated to owning a new bank loan and an old Bedford with a position as a sub-contractor with FH Stephens and Co carrying general freight from the Alexandria goods yard. A few years later Barry secured a job with timber merchants, HG Cush and Co, and took on a driver to earn his keep. At the same time Barry purchased a Ford 250 table-top and continued working out of FH Stephens, although, like many other hard workers in the road transport industry, and to supplement his income, he worked weekends for himself as Epping Taxi Trucks. A good offer, as a full-time driver carrying fly-ash for BMG Concrete to concrete plants all over NSW, was too hard to pass up.
The next challenge came with the construction of the Central Coast's power station at Lake Munmorah. Barry did several years as stores and transport supervisor with ICAL Pty Ltd, eventually undertaking study and becoming an industrial radiographer. At the end of that contract Barry easily found a niche for himself as transport manager with Sydney-based H & D McRae in their Cardiff warehouse at Newcastle. When McRaes was bought out by Linfox a few years later, the road beckoned once again and Barry opted for a drivers job in a Linfox Scania carrying groceries to Coles stores throughout NSW. By 1991 the road and the gleaming Ford Louisville Kentucky beckoned and Barry began carrying bulk milk from Grafton, Raleigh and Comboyne to the Dairy Farmers Lidcombe processing plant in Sydney for NSW Milk Transport Pty Ltd.
An industrial accident put Barry out of action for five long years. Fortunately, his retraining to enter the workforce introduced him to journalism which, when mixed with a lifetime of transport knowledge, produced one of this country's most respected transport industry writers and editors. For nine years Barry Whitney was the editor of Owner/Driver, the truckies bible.

Today Barry is retired but, despite some health issues, loves to have-a-steer carting out of Warnervale to keep the diesel running through his veins. A recent highlight was competing in the backward driver's team with his son Dean, and breaking their own old Guiness World record for reversing an articulated vehicle.