Duo brings trio of businesses to Dixon

DIXON – What does Dixon get when an Alaska native and a central Illinois trucker get together as partners in business and partners in life?

The answer? Actually, there are three: They get new owners of a longtime downtown bar, someone to call when a big rig breaks down, and a place that’ll hook you up with hauling services.

Brian Dabney and Jen Coley are the duo behind the trio of businesses that call the Petunia City home. The future husband and wife team own The Stables bar and Dabney Services truck repair and towing; while Dabney owns Dabney Trucking.

“The history of the town and the interesting places have always been fascinating, and I love hearing people tell their stories about the different things that they’ve experienced. The different local events that they hold all of the time I think is great. It’s a very supportive community within each other, and at the same time, you’re not in a big city but you have access to big city things.”

—  Jen Coley, Dixon business owner

They’ve had a lot going on in the three years they’ve been together, building a life together, and getting businesses off the ground and on the road, but they’ve enjoyed the support of the Dixon community along the way, both personally and for their businesses. Coley, a native of North Pole, Alaska, has been in the area since 1998. Dabney, from the small town of Minier, about 15 miles west of Bloomington, made Dixon his home when he got together with Coley. While the trucking business still has an office in Minier, he’s set up shop in Dixon, too, which has increased his customer base,

“There are a lot more opportunities here than what I’ve been accustomed to in Minier, a town of 1,500 people,” Dabney said. “The area’s been really good to us on trucking side. We’ve got a lot of work here in northern Illinois and the surrounding counties, and we seem to be growing every day, every month and every season when we do a lot of ag-related stuff with this area being an ag community.”

The Stables, with its signature turret overlooking South Galena Avenue, has been part of the downtown landscape since 1939. The trucking and tow businesses are the newer kids on the block: Dabney Services is housed in the former Hardin’s Auto Repair building on Willett Avenue on the northwest side of town, and the Dabney Trucking is on property once owned by the St. Mary Cement plant northeast of town.

Dabney and Coley bought The Stables from Ryan Marshall in March 2022. After a short delay in opening – a vehicle crashed into a support beam under the turret in November – the bar welcomed customers back on Dec. 9, for the first time in about a year and a half.

While the transition was mostly turnkey, Coley said, with few changes to the bar’s overall look, the couple did put their own stamp on The Stables.

One change was adding more domestic beers to its lineup of otherwise IPAs. One of the beers added to the tap selection was special to Coley – Alaskan Amber, which “is my own little piece of home,” she said. It’s an old-style amber ale, not sweet, not sour.

“It’s been pretty popular,” she said. “I’ve been surprised.”

Fittingly enough, the couple’s journey to becoming partners had its start behind the wheel. The two met when Dabney made a haul to a co-op Coley worked at. As they spent more time together, they knew they were in it for the long haul – and they also found out they shared something else in common. Coley had worked as a bartender off and on since coming to the area, and Dabney had wanted to own a bar one day.

“I always thought it would be fun to own a bar,” Dabney said. “I came in here a couple of times when the Marshalls had it, and I really liked the decor, the layout of the bar and the look of the bar. It’s a really nice, clean, small bar. Then it came for sale. The building and the location was just perfect, and we wanted to give it a shot.”

The Stables building, built in 1896, has two upper floors, which were formerly used for apartment space. The couple is using the second floor as an office for their businesses.

While the couple settled into their role as bar owners, they found that sometimes business would practically come knocking at their door.

One day in early March, a semi carrying an oversized load broke down near the front of the bar on its way up the hill on Galena Avenue. When customers noticed the stalled rig, they didn’t have to look too far to know who to call. Sure enough, a Kenworth T880 tow truck with the Dabney name on it hooked it up and maneuvered it up the hill and through the turn onto East Second Street. While there was a time when a job like that would’ve taken a call to a tow service miles away, Dabney had the right equipment in town to get the job done quickly and cleared the busy street.

“There’s not anything that we can’t tow,” Dabney said. “We’ve got light duty towing up to heavy-duty recovery. There’s not a lot of options for it this way. If you want to go to Rockford or La Salle-Peru, or the Quad-Cities, you’d be waiting a couple of hours. There’s a need for it in this area.”

Dabney and Coley purchased Hardin’s in August 2022 and specialize in diesel heavy truck repair. They started out with two heavy towers and now have five, and also are on on-call duty for District 1 of the Illinois State Police, based in Sterling, for large vehicle assistance and crash recovery.

Dabney’s fleet in the trucking business consists of more than 30 rigs, which haul LP gas, anhydrous ammonia and dry and liquid fertilizer, as well as seed and farm equipment. The company also began hauling gasoline tanks this year. Having a truck repair business comes in handy — if any of those trucks breaks down, they come right back to Dixon and are worked on in-house.

“Being here for a couple of years, I knew there was a need for a good diesel repair shop for heavy equipment, and also for a towing business,” Dabney said. “We’ve had that since August of ‘22, and the community has really been good to us since we opened our doors and started going.”

Dabney — who started Dabney Trucking in 2006, not long after graduating from college — is a second-generation trucker; his father, Jerry, owned Walters Trucking in Minier until Brian bought him out in 2018.

Having moved to Dixon to be close to his soon-to-be wife, Dabney keeps busy with the businesses. While he and Coley plan to get married, finding a date to make it happen while juggling three businesses has been a challenge, but one they gladly accept. The couple wants to make sure their businesses are going strong and their employees are taken care of.

“It comes with a lot of reward,” Coley said. “There’s a lot of personal satisfaction and success, but there’s a heavy commitment. I think the reason we can be successful is that, if we didn’t have the people that we have working with us – family and employees – it wouldn’t work. We have been very blessed.”

“You never know what the next day is going to throw at you,” Dabney added. “You have to have good people, from truck drivers to mechanics to bartenders.”

The couple not only has loyal workers in their businesses, but loyal customers, too. Longtime patrons of The Stables are glad to see the bar open again, and anyone who needs trucking and towing can find it close to home. The couple is finding out first hand that when they take care of the community, the community will take care of them.

“The history of the town and the interesting places have always been fascinating, and I love hearing people tell their stories about the different things that they’ve experienced,” Coley said. “The different local events that they hold all of the time I think is great. It’s a very supportive community within each other, and at the same time, you’re not in a big city but you have access to big city things.

“I think current businesses would agree, as well as anyone going into business, if you have the commitment and the chance to go into business, this community will support you. We’ve found that out.”