Wesley Long & Sons Haulage hits 15-year mark
26/01/2026
Based outside of Lifford, Co Donegal, Wesley Long & Sons Haulage Ltd is a family-run haulage business with 10 lorries on the road and an excellent reputation amongst its customers. Irish Trucker caught up with Robert Long recently to hear the company and its success at the recent Full of the Pipe Truck Show at Mondello Park.
Business is good these days at Wesley Long & Sons Haulage Ltd and the plan for the Long family and the rest of the team in Calhame, Ballindrait, Lifford, Co Donegal is to keep things that way for the foreseeable.
Operating with a team of 12 full-time, the company was first set-up by Managing Director Wesley Long in 2010 before becoming a limited venture a decade ago.
Wesley’s sons Robert and Matthew both work for the family business, as does their sister Kim who is in the office on a daily basis.
Irish Trucker spoke with Robert Long recently to discuss the ins and outs of Wesley Long & Sons Haulage Ltd – from its excellent fleet to hopes of further growth in the future.
“We’re based just outside Lifford and we are established since 2010,” he outlined. “My father would have bought a tipper during the boom before that and then he moved over to the artics in 2010.
“The company went limited then in 2015 and today we have 10 lorries on the road and 12 staff. You’d have myself, my brother Matthew and my father Wesley on the road and my sister Kim would be in the office.”
Since ‘Day One’ haulage has been the name of the game for the Long family and it’s a craft which they’ve mastered down through the years through sheer dedication and effort.
Their blue and white lorries can be seen on the roads all throughout the country and a quality service is something which the team in Calhame prides itself on.
“We do haulage all over Ireland. We specialise in curtain sider work all over,” said Robert.
“We do a wee bit of Scotland and Ireland, but mostly it would be Ireland. We have around 10 lorries and we would go to a lot of hardwares around the country and we’d do work for a lot of other hauliers as well.
“The likes of Donegal-based hauliers and a few different companies in Cavan and Carlow as well.”
As for the fleet which the company operates with, there are 10 trucks in total along with 20 trailers.
Scania (7), Volvo (2) and DAF (1) make up the fleet of trucks in the yard in Calhame where they could look to add again in 2026 in the form of another Volvo from McDonnell Commercials in Monaghan.
“I would say we'll be looking at maybe a new Scania or a new Volvo again,” said Robert.
“We did buy two new Scanias a while back. We bought one in 2022 and we bought a new Scania in 2023.
“We bought a brand-new Volvo there last year out of McDonnells in Monaghan, and we're planning to go for one of them again next year.”
In July, Wesley Long & Sons Haulage’s fleet was recognised at 2025 Full of the Pipe Truck Show at Mondello Park.
The company took third place in the show’s ‘Best Small Fleet’ category on the Sunday, capping off what was a fantastic weekend going by Robert’s tone.
“I did (enjoy the show). Very good night, I have to say. Good weekend. It definitely was,” he said.
“What I like about Full of the Pipe is that everybody's treated fairly. It doesn't matter how many lorries you have. If you have one or 20, it doesn't really matter because we're all treated the same, which is what I like.”
At the time it had been announced that Wesley Long & Sons Haulage came in third place, Robert and Co had been making tracks for home.
That afternoon saw Donegal and Meath clashing at Croke Park in the All-Ireland SFC semi-finals, with Jim McGuinness’s side winning by 20 points in the end, and Robert was keen to get on the road to ensure they’d miss the world of the traffic travelling back from the capital to the Tir Chonaill County.
“We were sitting about there on the Sunday and the Donegal-Meath game was on and we thought to ourselves we’ll need to go home very shortly because the traffic coming out of Croke Park wasn’t going to be great for us going up the road,” he recalled.
“So we're going up the road and I just happened to be lifting a trailer in Dublin and we got the call to say ‘Where are yous at? Yous have come third here’. We weren’t expecting anything to be quite honest, so it was a welcome surprise.”
No doubt Robert and his family will be back at the show again next year given the fantastic experience they had at it this past summer.
As for Wesley Long & Sons Haulage, the burning question is what is it about the company that sees its customers coming back to it for its services time and time again?
For Robert, so much of it comes down to that actual service which the family-run business provides week in, week out.
“Well, everything would be about service really. You need to be there on time for the customer and I think service has a lot to do with it. That's a lot of it,” he stated.
As for the hopes for the company for the coming months and heading towards next year, the Donegal man concluded: “We are hoping to grow more in the next few years. With drivers though, it’s more or less becoming a dying trade but, luckily, we have a real good team of men there at the minute.
“Good, reliable men are hard to get, but we're thankful that we have good men on our team at the minute. It makes the job a wee bit easier on us, you know?”
Wesley Long & Sons Haulage Ltd
Calhame,
Ballindrait,
Lifford,
Co Donegal
Mobile: 087 224 7696
Email: [email protected]
First published in Irish Trucker magazine January/February 2026, Vol 29-1
