Lyons Garage: the one-stop shop for all truck services
27/02/2025
Operating out of Beragh in County Tyrone, Lyons Garage delivers a comprehensive range of truck repair, maintenance and checking services to commercial fleet operators across mid Ulster. As the Lyons family are fourth-generation hauliers themselves, they understand implicitly the needs of truckers when it comes to vehicle upkeep.
It’s both fair and accurate to say that the genesis of Lyons Garage was an organic one, as this well-appointed and busy commercial vehicle workshop started life as an in-house garage serving Lyons Haulage’s own fleet of vehicles. From there, the business grew naturally in response to demand for the stellar, value-added services provided.
Today, Lyons Garage – located on the outskirts of Omagh - is known near and far as a truck and trailer repair and preventative maintenance centre of choice, specialising in the upkeep of all makes of lorries including major marques like Scania and Volvo.
Reflecting on the history of Lyons Garage, hands-on director Mark Lyons notes: “We run Lyons Haulage and alongside that we run the garage as a sole trader business. The transport came first.”
Mark is the third of four successive generations of the family to be involved in the transport industry: “My grandfather Francie was in transport, followed by my father Derek and then me. My son Dean is also on board now – he’s Transport Manager.”
The Lyons family are also involved in agri, as they run a family dairy farm as well as a small lime merchant’s business, selling lime to local farmers. All of the businesses dovetail together nicely…
“The farm is separate but the transport, garage and lime business all work together,” says Mark. “We built the garage in 2006 for our own fleet of trucks and then gradually expanded it to take in outside work as well.
“In 2014, we built on another bay for compliance checks for customers – it’s like a PSV lane, really, with brake testing and shaker plates. There are four bays in the workshop now and a middle bay with office, showers and a canteen for drivers and customers.”
With these facilities in place, Lyons Garage really is a one-stop shop for commercial vehicle owners and operators! Their site on Crevenagh Road is a hive of activity, serving as a lively hub and meeting point for many local hauliers.
“We’re on a 4.5-acre commercial site with a full wash bay and a weighbridge facility on site,” Mark continues. “Around one acre of the facility is concreted. We also have a second shed here, 100 x 40, where we do a little bit of warehousing, storing bags of lime mainly.
“Additionally, we have parking facilities for various operators who use the yard as their operating centre. While their vehicles are here, I carry out their compliance checks ever six or eight weeks. At the moment, we have three full-time technicians working in the garage as well as two part-time trainees.
“The business is going well and you could say it has taken on a life of its own. It wasn’t something we were necessarily planning. As I said earlier, we built it originally as three bays for our own trailers and vehicles, but more and more local hauliers came to us and Lyons Garage has grown on the back of that, with a lot of good customers coming in and continuing to avail of our services.”
While haulage is a competitive sector and often portrayed as a cut-throat one, there is no evidence of this at Lyons Garage, where the sense of unity and camaraderie that prevails between local operators is a real breath of fresh air.
“We all work together. With us being involved in transport, we understand hauliers’ needs and the whole compliance side of things. We know what they need to be doing. Especially with young lads coming into the industry, I can point them in the right direction as I have 25 years’ experience working in transport,” comments Mark, who adds that one of the many strengths of Lyons Garage / Lyons Haulage is that they are family businesses, boasting all the traditional values that this entails:
“My dad has retired now but is still involved in the background. My mother has retired, too, but she is always in and out as an extra pair of eyes. It’s very much a family business and always had been. None of this would be possible, without the support of my wife Janet. As well as Dean, we also have two daughters coming along who are very interested in trucks as well. Our eldest daughter Justine has her HGV licence and Jody is getting ready to do her licence too. Nicole is more interested in the farming. My brother Jason drove with us for twelve years.”
Lyons Haulage covers the full spectrum of general haulage – refrigerated, curtainsider, flat and tipper work – always moving in line with changes and prevailing trends in the industry. At present, they run a fleet of ten magnificent Scania V8s. “I always found Scania very reliable. Some of them are older models but the drivers love them. Once you mention Scania to a driver, they are more inclined to get involved.”
Between Lyons Garage, Lyons Haulage and the lime merchant’s business, Mark is happy with where the family business is at right now: “We’re in a good place at the moment. If more work comes along in the garage side, we won’t turn it down. We’ll expand according to demand.
“It’s all about demand,” the Tyrone man concludes. “A lot of our work is all word of mouth. We don’t advertise outside of a very small bit on social media. We get a lot of repeat work from customers who are happy with the service we provide and they also recommend us to others. We look after all our customers with quality work to keep them on the road. We don’t mess anybody around; if we can’t do a job, we won’t take it on.”
Lyons Garage,
157 Crevenagh Road,
Omagh,
County Tyrone.
Tel: +44 7894 108633
Email: [email protected]
First published in Irish Trucker magazine January/February 2025, Vol 28-1
