Capital Equipment News October 2016

CAPITAL EQUIPMENT NEWS

OCTOBER 2016

100

TRUCK SALE FOR FAW HARRISMITH

FAW Harrismith, awarded Best FAW Dealer

of the Year Award in 2014, has delivered its

100

truck, a first among FAW’s Southern Af-

rican dealers to sell this many units through a

single FAW franchised dealership.

Jianyu Hao, CEO of FAW Vehicle Manufac-

turers South Africa, says the sale milestone

by a single dealer marks an evolution among

the FAW representatives across southern

Africa. “Our representative sales and service

dealers are passionate about our brand and

are certainly advancing their skills, knowl-

edge and ability to compete with other

established commercial vehicle retailers,”

says Hao. “We thank the customer, VKB for

the faith in the brand and congratulate the

dealership team for exceptional resilience

in a tough market and their commitment to

excellent customer service.”

Juan Wiggill, dealer principal at FAW

Harrismith, credits his entire 26-person staff

with the achievement. “Here at FAW Har-

rismith we all have a passion for the brand

and are dedicated to customer service,

whether on the sales or the aftersales ser-

vice and maintenance side. The key asset to

any good dealership is good, well-trained,

right-attitude staff.”

The 100

sale was delivered to VKB,

which added a FAW 28.380FT to its existing

FAW fleet. Bryan Boshoff, logistics manag-

er at VKB, says that not only are the FAW

vehicles giving the company good fuel con-

sumption figures, but are also lowering total

cost of operations. More importantly Boshoff

praises the FAW Harrismith dealership for

providing VKB exceptional service, main-

tenance and parts support for their whole

FAW fleet, which includes the 4 t FAW 7.130,

the newer 5 t FAW 8.140 and a number of

13,5 t FAW 28.330 units. VKB runs a fleet

of 60 trucks and 400 LCVs to deliver gener-

al goods, flour and fertiliser, among others,

across South Africa. “Downtime is a critical

element when it comes to our own service

delivery. So, it’s great to have a truck partner

who understands this and the effect it has on

our business,” adds Boshoff.

Juan Wiggill, dealer Principle at FAW

Harrismith (right) congratulates Bryan

Boshoff, logistics manager at VKB for his new

FAW purchase.

TRANSPORT & LOGISTICS NEWS IN BRIEF

Cargo Coil Rail loads into market

At IAA Commercial Vehicles 2016, Kögel

launched its new Cargo Coil Rail with

FlexiUse body and RoRo equipment.

The trailer is flexible for the transport of

coils and split strips by road, rail or sea.

Thanks to its large adjustment range, the

FlexiUse body of the semi-trailer can be

easily adapted to varied transport tasks.

Another highlight of this body for trucks

without drop sides is the new double rail

codification. As a result, the trailer not

only solves even more transport tasks, but

it also saves time and money, because

it is easy and simple to use on a wide

variety of railway lines.

Merc’s Future Bus

Mercedes Benz has shown its semi-

automated Mercedes-Benz Future Bus

with CityPilot at IAA 2016, said to be

even safer, more efficient and more

comfortable. It is said to show what

local transport services of the future

will look like. Connectivity, camera and

radar systems, as well as the use of data

fusion catapult city buses into the future.

The technology behind CityPilot in the

Future Bus is based on the self-driving

Mercedes-Benz Actros with Highway

Pilot, which was unveiled two years ago

at the IAA. Due to its specific application

in a city bus, the technology was further

developed in a targeted manner, seeing

the addition of numerous additional

functions. Accordingly, CityPilot can

recognise traffic lights, communicate

with them and drive safely over junctions

equipped with traffic lights. It can

also detect obstacles and, above all,

pedestrians on the road, automatically

braking in response to them.

Kögel’s Mega Trailer with

individual equipment

At IAA Commercial Vehicles 2016,

Kögel exhibited its Mega Trailer,

which is perfect for classic, standard

tasks and high-volume transport.

The internal height of 3 m makes it

the ideal trailer for the just-in-time

business in the automotive sector.

Loading and unloading stacked pallet

cages is simple, thanks to the standard

mechanical/hydraulic lifting roof. This

increases the side and rear through-

loading height to more than 3 m. The

standard Kögel integral roof tarpaulin

also guarantees improved handling with

an open roof. Thanks to the roof straps

being integrated in the roof tarpaulin,

sagging straps are a thing of the past.

This eliminates the straps snagging on

the load.

The South African commercial vehicle mar-

ket continues to track various industry pre-

dictions with the forecasted decline in new

truck sales recorded during August. This

is according to the latest results released

by the National Association of Automobile

Manufacturers of South Africa, Associated

Motor Holdings and Amalgamated Automo-

bile Distributors.

At the end of August, the truck market was

4,2% down on the corresponding period in

2015, reaching 12 154 sales. On a year-to-

date basis, only the Heavy Commercial Vehi-

cles (HCV) and Bus segments managed to re-

main in the black, recording growth of 1,6%

(3 487 units) and 7,3% (789 units) respective-

ly. Medium Commercial Vehicle (MCV) sales

have declined by a significant 18% to 5 409

units so far this year, while sales in the Ex-

tra Heavy Commercial Vehicle segment de-

clined by 7,5% to 7 878 units. According to

Gert Swanepoel, acting vice-president of UD

Trucks Southern Africa, the EHCV segment in

particular is heavily impacted by the lack of

business confidence in the local economy.

“In essence, fleet operators are ‘sweat-

ing their assets’ or adopting a wait and see

approach,” explains Swanepoel. “However,

there has been some positive activity over

the past few weeks in specifically the con-

struction sub-segment, but we will have to

see how all of this pans out during the com-

ing months and if it will have any significant

impact on sales.”

He points out that a drastic decline in com-

modity prices has also impacted buying from

the mining industry, which usually makes up

a big portion of EHCV sales. UD Trucks ex-

pects the market to remain flat during the

next quarter. The company advises truck

owners to scrutinise all costs in order to

eliminate any wastages and not to let vehicle

maintenance fall behind as this can be more

costly in the long run.

“We understand that there are always

cycles to our business, so we place more

emphasis on looking after our customers

efficiently, professionally and dependably

– whatever the market conditions. An in-

teractive partnership between us and our

customers is the best medicine,” comments

Swanepoel.

Commodity prices and declining economy

impact SA truck sales