‘Your books must be spotless’: Whiteline Transport founder Sharon Middleton opens about about ‘nightmare’

A national transport industry stalwart has urged WA trucking businesses to make sure their books are “robust and spotless” after opening up about a four-year legal battle to clear her company’s name. Sharon Middleton, the director of Whiteline Transport, spoke candidly about the toll the legal battle with South Australia Police and the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator had taken at an industry conference in Perth last month. Ms Middleton, the South Australian Road Transport Association president, and her husband Bob launched Whiteline Transport from the ground-up in 1977, but had no idea of the “nightmare” that lay ahead more than 40 years later. Whiteline Transport and its owners won a four-year legal battle against SA Police and the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator in September last year after quashing a raft of alleged fatigue-related breaches. The regulator last year withdrew all charges against Whiteline, the Middletons and all 23 of its drivers after the Adelaide Magistrates Court refuted much of the prosecutor’s evidence in preliminary trial hearings. Speaking at the Livestock and Rural Transporters Association conference in Perth on August 23, Ms Middleton opened up about the “nightmare” legal battle that caused the family-owned business both immense stress and money. “My message is, it’s great to have an in-house legal team but you have to do the hard yards and need to make sure your records are spotless so you can go in to bat for yourself,” she said. “All of those processes you have in your business are so important — an attitude of ‘she will be right mate’, just doesn’t cut it.” Whiteline has grown from a single truck making long-haul runs from the east coast to the west, to a bigger operation with a major depot and head office in Adelaide and others in Perth and Berri in South Australia. The issues stemmed after an accident involving long-term Kingsley ‘Kingy/No.1’ Bowley on December 27, 2020, who had been with the company for 18 years and driven four million-incident free kilometres before the accident occurred. Bowley, 67, had allegedly failed to see a motorist up ahead in time due to smoke on the road that suddenly thickened from a grass fire adjacent to the freeway. On March 1 the following year, Mr Bowley was charged with aggravated driving and dangerous driving causing death. Just five days later, Mr Bowley died in his truck at the Whiteline depot from an apparent heart attack immediately after returning from a run to Perth. SA Police issued a Prohibition Notice taking all Whiteline trucks off the road on August 28, 2021. After two hearings in the Supreme Court, the judge quashed the notice, and the trucks were rolling again on September 3, but the Middleton’s long legal fight was far from over. The NHVR persisted, laying fatigue-related charges against 23 drivers and the Middletons for alleged false work diary entries. The regulator also laid further charges against the company and against the Middletons under Section 26 of the Heavy Vehicle National Law and Regulations, alleging failures of primary duties, based on the fatigue-related charges against their drivers. The regulator withdrew all charges in September, with a number of the notices issued to the company ruled to have been issued unlawfully Magistrate Brian Nitschke also describing one SAPOL officer’s actions in issuing a notice as “lazy and unlawful”. Ms Middleton spoke candidly about her overwhelming relief at having her and her business’ name cleared, but urged those in the room — especially those running family trucking businesses — to make sure their books were spotless. She urged business owners to prioritise good filing systems and data. “You need to be able to show what a driver was doing at any minute of the day,” she said. “We found that there seemed to be an underlying belief you could not trust a driver to accurately record their diary.” Flanking Ms Middleton at the LRTWA conference was her KLK Legal consultant Neville John, who launched the initial injunction application in the Supreme Court and stood by the Middletons’ side throughout the legal ordeal. He acts as a consultant in the area of compliance and enforcement heavy vehicle law matters, and said the Whiteline Transport case was a “major victory” with the Middletons fighting hard to justice when “many would have given up”.