Q&A with retiring Navistar global market veteran Tim Quinlan

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Motoring Australia / June 29, 2015

With his retirement beckoning, Navistar Auspac's Tim Quinlan says he's leaving International and Cat Trucks in safe hands…

With over 37 years under his belt with Navistar and International before it, Tim Quinlan has ridden with the American truck manufacturer through good times and bad.

Having just relinquished his role as Managing Director at Navistar's Australian subsidiary, Navistar Auspac, the 65-year-old American is heading home to begin his retirement, after a six-month contract here overseeing the reintroduction of International to Australia and mapping out the future for both it and sibling brand, Cat Trucks.

From humble beginnings in 1972 as a California-based accounting clerk with International Harvester, Quinlan quickly rose through the ranks to become an export market specialist, overseeing International and later Navistar operations in markets as diverse as the Middle East, Africa, and Russia.

His career saw him based on two occasions in Brussels (Belgium), before moving to Johannesburg (South Africa) in 1995 – a post from where he went on to guide Navistar's operations for the entire Eastern Hemisphere, including Australia.

From 2000, and while still based in South Africa, Quinlan oversaw International here in partnership with Iveco Australia, which had bought the International Harvester operation in Dandenong, Victoria, in 1992. He continued in that role until the arrival of the joint venture between Navistar and Caterpillar, the new entity known as NC2.

The formation of NC2 eventually spelled the end of Quinlan's time at Navistar – at least for a while. Unable to fully support the endeavour in concept or roll-out, he left the company and set up his own consultancy business with his wife in Johannesburg.

That continued until last year, when Navistar approached Quinlan to head up Navistar Auspac. There he would fill the void left by outgoing chief Kevin Dennis and guide the reintroduction of International, while continuing the efforts of Cat Trucks.

It was a contract Quinlan couldn't turn down, its relatively brief six-month duration belying the gravity of the role, if not ultimately altering the date of Quinlan's impending retirement.

Now, with preparations for International's return well underway, Quinlan and his wife are heading home to the US, to begin that retirement in earnest.

trucksales.com.au caught up with the Navistar stalwart just days before his departure, to chat about his career, International's return, and the future for it and Cat Trucks in Australia…


trucksales.com.au: You're no stranger to Australia. Prior to heading up Navistar Auspac, how have you been involved with trucks here?

Tim Quinlan: While I was based in South Africa I picked up responsibility for Australia in 2000; at that time Iveco had our brand, importing some medium and heavy trucks at the time; they weren't building any International trucks.

My service manager from South Africa had been working in Australia, and he came back the year before and was telling me how badly Iveco was doing. When I took on the role I was told by Navistar in Chicago to come over and terminate the agreement.

I was prepared to do that until I ran into Alain Gajnik, who had just joined Iveco from Mack as marketing manager. He appreciated the value of an American truck within the Iveco business and said that we should try to figure it out.

We put together an assembly program and spent the next 10 years working together – International became the conventional product in the Dandenong plant and Iveco focused primarily on its cab-overs.

Later people in Chicago would tell me, 'You can't do business with a competitor', but I actually thought we did pretty well – pretty well for working under the same roof, for them being a European manufacturer and us being a US manufacturer.

The dealer network was pretty much an old International network anyway – they had International blood in them – so the dealers were pushing them to keep the International brand.

But the [NC2] joint venture in 2010 forced the end of that. Part of the agreement was we had to get out of any other International business in this market, and the distribution [of Cat Trucks] had to go through them [Cat].


TS: You weren't in favour of the joint venture, were you?

TQ: You know, that's a difficult one for me because I really am passionate about it. I didn't agree with the strategy, but that was a strategy that was being conducted at a far higher level than my colleagues and I.

I actually took a contract and stayed on for a year with the NC2 joint venture because I felt I owed my dealers around this part of the world to help them transition in the best possible way.

I think if they had developed a construction/vocational-type truck, something like what they developed in North America for the Cat network over there, and then offered that to Cat dealers around the world, including Australia, to whet their appetite for the truck business, then we could have moved them maybe into the highway business.

But to start them right away in the highway business? They just didn't understand it, even though they were in the engine business – that's different to being truck dealers. They were engine people; the [Cat] dealer network found looking after the trucks to be a totally different animal than looking after their usual earthmoving, construction and stationary equipment.

I think that's been a learning curve for Cat; certainly it has been for us. Trucks demand a different mentality and I think that's where we've probably had the most problems – that and the fact that they raced this thing through. It was too much, too fast, in my opinion.

And on top of that, you had Cat going out of the engine business – that happened just before the joint venture. That decision really upset this market, and so we've come in as partners with them to a market that in some instances was mad at Cat. It was a bit tricky.

So I guess the learning is, what looks good on paper doesn't necessarily work out in reality.

I think it's interesting that as we went around to the other parts of the world, trying to talk to Cat dealers to become part of it, they didn't want to. Australia is the only market where the Cat dealers signed up to take on the truck business, so that must tell you something.


TS: How easy or hard was the decision to take on the Navistar Auspac role?

TQ: It wasn't very difficult, actually. I was shocked, because I thought I was done with International when I retired, because I left a little bit bitter in the sense that they didn't listen to us about how the joint venture maybe should have been put together – they decided to do it their own way.

I left because I didn't believe in it and so I didn't leave with the best feeling, but to be able to come back and help in some little way to bring the International brand back and get it on the right path, I was very grateful for the opportunity.

Dave Allen [then Vice President, Parts Sales, Service and Operations, Navistar Global] was caretaking this market after Kevin Dennis left kind of suddenly. I think the intention was Dave was going to try to do it from Chicago but he found out he had a full-time job there, so he asked me if I'd consider it.

It was very quick; this was in the middle of November last year and I was back in early December for two weeks with Dave on transition, before my wife and I returned to Australia in January.


TS: What have been the biggest challenges you've faced in overseeing International's return?

TQ: The biggest challenges have been on the internal side, in the sense of getting some clarity on where we stood with Caterpillar.

Cat left the joint venture in 2011. Since that time Navistar has really been representing the Cat brand here, so in bringing International here we don't really have a clear identity as Navistar – it really hasn't been a Navistar business, if you see what I mean.

So my challenge in putting International on the right path is to bring a Navistar culture to it, while we also had to wait for clarity on the distribution going forward.

We felt we needed to offer the International brand to the Cat network, but we couldn't be sure that Cat was going to allow that because they had to agree to it – so we waited until around March before we had clarity that we could have dual distribution.

The biggest challenge now is putting the right dealer network in place.


TS: Has there been much progress with that network?

TQ: We don't have anybody signed yet but we're at the very beginning stage. We've met a few former International dealers and we've met some others I didn't know who have expressed interest.

We've offered it to the Cat dealers and four out of five have declined. The fifth one is considering it and we're hopeful that they will take International on. So we might end up with one dual-brand dealer and individual-brand dealers in another network.

That's the biggest mission for the next 12 months. The good thing is we've got a bit of time – we don't go into full production until February next year, so we've got until then to start putting the pieces in place for the dealer network.


TS: What sort of synergies have been realised between International and Cat Trucks?

TQ: Because we had the ProStar platform for the Cat truck, a lot of the engineering required to bring the International here has already been done. It's a ProStar with a Cat badge and some other Cat DNA, so if we hadn't had that program then we wouldn't have a right-hand-drive ProStar and we'd have to figure that out. That's already done – those synergies are already there.

Our advantage now is that we can still cater to the Cat-loving customers and the guys who don't want to spend a premium to buy a Cat-branded truck, but who still want a good North American alternative and who will accept a Cummins engine. We've got the best of both worlds.

I think it's a bit telling that the majority of the Cat dealers have said they don't want to take on International – it just shows how hard they've found the truck business. Because if they had found it easy and if they were happy with it, then why not take on the other and have both?

So they know themselves, and they understood fully that if they don't take it then they're going to have an International dealer somewhere in their neighbourhood. But they made that decision and good for them.

At least they took a good look at themselves and asked, 'Can we do it justice, or are we kidding ourselves?


TS: So with your departure, who will be guiding the ship going forwards?

TQ: I have a succession plan in place. A colleague of mine who worked with me in South Africa and who helped me manage the business here is going to look after the market from South Africa along with a locally based fellow ex-pat. He also worked with me for many years – he's a 45-year International guy.

So there's going to be a couple of International people looking after it. The local fellow will be the in-country manager but he'll be on a management/consulting contract, because he's retired from the Navistar joint venture.

We're still finalising a few things but their names will be released soon.


TS: Seems Navistar attracts a few executives back from retirement…

TQ: Maybe that's not ideal but for the next 12 to 18 months I think it's still important to reinforce that Navistar culture. For any local we might have found it would have taken a lot to get them to understand the strengths and weaknesses Navistar has as a global organisation. But we know them.

It will be managed kind of like how we did with Iveco – the chief will still be living in South Africa but he'll be coming here every couple of months for a couple of weeks. I first hired him almost 20 years ago, so he's still working for the company over there covering all the markets outside of South Africa.

He's very good at setting up dealers and then getting them up to speed, so he'll be a very good help and mentor for people like Glen Sharman [Navistar Auspac Director, Sales, Marketing and Business Development].


TS: Is it tough leaving the role before the local roll-out of International is fully realised?

TQ: That's a very good question but I didn't come in with any illusions – I agreed to a six-month contract with the possibility of extending by a couple of months, but you know what? If we didn't have the succession plan, if we didn't have some clarity on the dealer network, then I would have probably suggested that I stay a little longer. But we have that, so we might as well get started with the people who are going to carry it on – I have complete confidence in both my successors to carry on what I've started.

So whether it be now or a couple of months from now, I was determined to retire and be home by Thanksgiving anyway, and that's November. But I feel like I wish they had asked me two years earlier, because I would have liked to have had a couple of years to work with the organisation to make them more understanding of the Navistar culture.

Previously we operated in a niche environment and NC2 tried to make us global. We proved to ourselves that that didn't work, so now we're going back to the niches and we're starting with markets where we've got the brand name – markets like Australia.

We're working very hard to get back into South Africa – we've got the brand name there too – so if we can get success there, get a foothold back in these markets, then Navistar can start to grow the export business again.

So I feel gratified that at least I'm leaving seeing the ProStar coming, and seeing these guys getting started on an International dealer network, but the product launch next year I can watch from the beaches of California.

I'm leaving Navistar Auspac in very good hands. Now that it's in place, or on the way to being in place, I can leave feeling good about what I've started, and I can look back and I know that they'll carry it on.