Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 463 i Deals On Wheels Australia

Enquiries on the 117,000+ stock items for sale on Australia’s leading transport and machinery classifieds network jumped 25 per cent in calendar 2020, new data reveals. Buoyant conditions in the farm machinery sector saw enquiries on TradeEarthmovers.com.au, TradeFarmMachinery.com.au and TradePlantEquipment.com.au surge 42.8 per cent in the period. Enquiries on transport equipment websites BusNews.com.au, Fullyloaded.com.au, OwnerDriver.com.au and TradeTrucks.com.au rose a robust 8.5 per cent in the period. Perhaps reflecting the impact of COVD-19 on buyer behaviour, email enquiries leapt 32.07 per cent in calendar 2020, well ahead of the 22.45 per cent increase in phone enquiries. The growth in enquiries was generated off the back of strong traffic growth, with organic unique visitors up 15.4 per cent in the 12-month period. Email traffic jumped 10 per cent year-on-year (YoY). Leading the…

Hyundai Trucks is back in the country with a whole new range of light-duty, medium-duty and expanding into the heavy-duty segment this year. Among the showstoppers is the all-new midsize Hyundai Pavise, which is set to launch in the Australian market in early 2021. Pavise represents the latest in technology Hyundai Trucks has to offer with class-leading powertrains, safety, design and space. A range of chassis and wheelbase options means Pavise will be the perfect addition to any fleet or business. “Pavise comes in three chassis variants and multiple wheelbase options, starting at 12 tonnes in a 4x2 configuration. There is an option of the 12 tonne-rated D112 model, 15.5 tonne-rated D115 and 17.6 tonne-rated D217 model. There are also plans to bring a 6x2 configuration variant to Australia by…

At 70 years of age, Stephen ‘Tiny’ Monkhouse still plies the Hume Highway each night, completing two Sydney to Melbourne return runs and a change-over each week for Sydney-based Lawson’s Transport. The Mercedes Benz Actros he currently drives provides a stark contrast to the Perkins diesel-powered International AB 180 12-tonner that Tiny cut his teeth on so many years ago. While some of the details of Tiny’s early working life can be a little hazy, leaving school must have been a pivotal moment in time, as he swiftly quips early in our conversation: “I left school at the age of 14 years and 10 months.” Such chronological specifics might suggest that leaving school was something of a big deal to him. After bidding farewell to his school days, Tiny went…

At the close of 2019, Kenworth’s grip on heavy-duty market leadership was looking extremely tenuous and with Volvo in hot pursuit, many pundits predicted it wouldn’t be long before the two swapped places on the leadership ladder. For the record, Kenworth finished 2019 with 18.5 per cent of the market on the delivery of 2,350 trucks. Volvo had drawn increasingly closer through the year, finishing with 17.6 per cent and 2,239 units. Momentum certainly appeared to be with Volvo and in a decidedly depressed, COVID-constrained start to the year, the halfway point in 2020 saw the Swedish maker grab the front with 18.8 per cent and Kenworth back on 16.6 per cent. Then something happened. Either the wheels fell off Volvo’s charge or Kenworth demand went into hyper-drive, or maybe…

I’m willing to go to some pretty extravagant lengths when it comes to chasing down a story. I’ll set an early alarm and sacrifice much-needed beauty sleep. I’ll do a full day on the road and then still pack up my camera gear and go shooting. I’ve even missed some of the Bathurst 1000 in order to catch a photoshoot. I do, however, draw the line at taking my camera gear out in the rain. I’m far too protective of it for that. My Nikons are like my children if I had or even liked children. I protect them from elements, I try to protect them from falls and injuries, and I most assuredly keep them safe from Canon shooters. It’s what a good parent does. I always assumed this…

‘This One’s For You’. If you look closely you’ll see that’s the name printed on the side of the TNS Logistics Mercedes-Benz, a shout out to the late Tom Norton, one half of the team that founded the business. Sadly I never had the privilege of knowing or working for Tom, but after spending time with his lovely family in the process of writing this story, I know I would have been honoured to have worked for the man. I get the impression he was a straight-up ‘no BS’ kind of guy that had earned the position and respect he attained. I went looking for a story on one of the coolest Mercedes-Benz trucks I’d seen and came away with a family tale of strength and perseverance. I also got…

As January traditionally signals a new beginning and the lowest sales month of the year, the caution against overstating the meaning of the commercial vehicle sales during it is naturally high. The only clues – and they are rough ones, given volatility in the numbers are common later in the year – tend to be yearly comparisons. Even so, taking what we have of the Truck Industry Council’s (TIC’s) T-Mark figures for last month, the market is off to the third-fastest start in a five-year period that encompassed the boom of 2018 and 2019. At 1,998, January 2021 is bested only by 2018’s 2,227 and 2019’s 2,196 and is ahead of 2017’s 1,920 and 2020’s 1,852, when the boom ran out of puff for the economy and the market. Isuzu…

It’s mid-week in early December and Victorians are tentatively emerging from 112 days of severe lockdown – unquestionably the strictest and most gruelling restrictions in the country, by a long shot. Yet, walking through Tullamarine airport for the first time in a year, and in cafes and hotels and shops, there’s a subtle but nonetheless sanguine sense of reprieve as the state nervously retreats from a depressingly difficult and, as many believe and begrudge, largely avoidable second wave of COVID-19 infections. A wave that took more than 800 Victorian lives. Still, it comes as no real surprise that at Paccar Australia headquarters in Bayswater on Melbourne’s south-eastern rim, COVID protocols remain robust and uncompromising. Security has always been tight at ‘Kenworth castle’ but never like this. For employees and visitors…