Isuzu is solid with New Wave Concreting

Every town has a few businesses that are part of the fabric of the area – generous, visible and classically local.

Hailing from Cowes on Victoria’s Phillip Island, New Wave Concreting is one such company, as dedicated to its customers and town as they are to owner Luke Hinrichs.

Luke and the team help the locals ‘beautify’ their environment with decorative concreting, from feature walls to patios, down to the good old driveway and a glow-up for the garage floor.

Decorative concreting is by no means an easy feat. It’s a highly sought-after service that has kept New Wave Concreting busy year after year for almost a quarter of a century.

“Concreting is something a bit different to most trades because it’s not something that you can get qualified people for – there’s no apprenticeship,” Luke explains.

“It’s really hard to find professional employees, so I’ve been very lucky to get such a top-level crew.

“They’re just extremely friendly, local guys with homes in the area, young families, kids at school and it definitely helps. It keeps the clients happy, and it makes my life a lot easier.

“The guys can run New Wave Concreting without much assistance from me,” he adds proudly.

After running an Isuzu Ready-to-Work Tradepack for eight years without finding fault, it made sense to Luke to stick with a proven formula when the time came to evolve the New Wave fleet. According to Luke, they couldn’t have gone anywhere except back to Matt Evans at Patterson Cheney Isuzu for a brand-new, Ready-to-Work Isuzu FRR 107-210 Tipper.

The New Wave Concreting Tipper isn’t hard to spot on the streets of Phillip Island. After taking away top prize in the F series category of last year’s Truck of the Year competition, it’s also easy to see why.

A head-turning wrap from Steve Price at CC Signs and Designs has made the new Tipper into a mobile advertisement for the company.

“People have responded really well to the truck; quite a few clients have said they’ve got my number directly off it… I even get stopped by holidaymakers if I’m driving it around on the weekend,” says Luke.

The Isuzu FRR Tipper is a turn-key transport solution that can be driven straight from the showroom to the job site, and it fits the bill perfectly for a business like Luke’s.

You can find the New Wave crew out and about in the Tipper daily, working on residential streets and cul-de-sacs, reversing into awkward driveways and parking on the fly in their nimble new work truck.

A generous GVM of 11,000kg and GCM of 16,000kg have allowed the New Wave team to increase their productivity, getting more done in one run than ever before. And with one of the quickest tipper raise times in the business and a tray designed for the rough and tumble, the FRR is equipped to handle job after job for New Wave.

“Each job used to need a few runs to the tip or back to our premises, but now it can all get done in one go,” says Luke. “Our guys are all on site for the day, so the job is taking less time which means happier customers.”

“We’ve been using a much smaller tipper for years, so have definitely noticed the difference the Isuzu has made in making the job much easier and our dig-out quicker,” he says.

“With all the extra payload we can get more weight on the back, saving us at least two or three trips a day around the island.”

Luke notes that one of the greatest joys of owning a business is when it becomes part and parcel of everyday life in the community. It’s as good as it gets when you are recognised as a local fixture.

“We’re pretty well known around town,” Luke says.

“We did all the concreting in the Koala Park and a lot of the major tourist attractions down this way, so we’ve been able to get involved, which has been great.

“It’s a really good community down here, so we help out wherever we can – we do the concreting work for the golf clubs, and we’re involved with the sporting clubs, football, netball… we sponsor the lawn bowls clubs, both the golf clubs as well.

“In a place as small as this, it’s important do right by your customers or you won’t last five minutes,” Luke notes.

“We’re very consistently booked ahead four to six months a year… our next big project is the Cowes Cultural Centre,” Luke concluded.