Isuzu takes molasses to the masses

Aside from being a part of our national identity, it’s no secret that the livestock sector is of vital importance to the sustainability of rural communities and economies in Australia.

Due to the growing demand for animal products, there’s a constant need to refine and develop livestock production systems and deliver them through unpredictable weather conditions.

According to industry figures, our red-meat industry feeds 24 million Australians, contributes to 405,000 Australian jobs through direct and indirect employment and generates $14 billion in export revenue through the supply of more than 100 global markets.

This is all against the backdrop of a particularly harsh and unforgiving environment here in Australia. From devastating floods to crippling drought, Australian farmers battle through it all.

During these tougher times, help is at hand.

Tenterfield-based, Duff Pastoral, distributes a molasses-based liquid cattle feed to farmers. This liquid feed helps cattle digest dry and low-quality feed, particularly useful in times of drought.

Duff Pastoral distributes the product straight into the paddocks of farmers and adjusts the product according to the cattle’s needs.

The Duff Pastoral fleet travels all around northern New South Wales and southern Queensland delivering its products. With depots in Tenterfield and Goondiwindi, Rob and his team travel as far north as Warwick and as south as Guyra, covering 296km vertically. In terms of west to east, they travel from Mungindi to Lismore, covering 558km of land.

Rob and his crew do around 230,000 kilometres a year, so they needed a truck that could be relied on to travel the distance yet remain comfortable. It was a no-brainer for the Kenway & Clarke dealership in Goondiwindi to recommend the Isuzu’s Giga CXY 240-460 and the popular FXD 165-350 model.

The Duff Pastoral trucks are not pretty. They do long days of driving through patches of rough ground and mixed conditions, and yet their Isuzu trucks have always coped.

Robert said this reliability was one of the main reasons they bought Isuzu.

“There’s lots of people that depend on us for feed for their cattle, so we can’t afford to be broken down. We have to have reliable trucks.”

“We do pretty long days, so we need as much comfort as we can.”

Both models are also fitted with the ISRI 6860 air suspension driver’s seat, complete with pneumatic lumbar support, height, rake and automatic weight adjustments. This means Rob’s drivers can customise their seating for those longer trips.

Not only do these trucks need to be comfortable, they need to do the job. Both of Rob’s trucks are kitted out with custom built bodies that suit his needs. The Giga features onboard scales that weigh the molasses product, with the FXD fitted with a flow meter to measure the product by volume.

“We buy the product by weight, so it’s beneficial to sell it by weight too. Then there’s no discrepancy. The product’s weight alters depending on the consistency of the molasses and so forth. So, it’s much fairer both ways if it’s weighed off rather than metered by volume. The build on our Giga does that for us,” he said.

“They’re both purpose-built for the job. It’s not the sort of thing we can just chuck onto any sort of truck.”

And trust him when he says it’s not pretty or glamorous what he does.

“Our trucks do a lot of hard work. They don’t look very pretty, because of the areas that we operate in. We have a lot of collisions with wildlife – kangaroos, pigs, that sort of thing. And they’re on rough roads pretty much all the time, but the Isuzu’s handle it all very well.”

The Giga and FXD have the power and agility to compliment the work Duff Pastoral do. With a gross vehicle mass (GVM) of 16,500kg, power of 257kW at 2000rpm and torque of 1422Nm at 1400rpm, the FXD 165-350 is not messing around. The Giga sits even higher, with a GVM of 24,000kg, power of 309kW at 1800rpm and torque of 1863Nm at 1300rpm.

Additionally, access was a big factor for Rob, as the trucks are often working in tight and hard to reach locations.

“Being cab overs, they’re a lot easier to get through a lot of tight spaces, through gates in properties and so forth. From that standpoint, they’re good to get around in, despite being larger trucks.”

In the demanding industry of farming and agriculture, Robert has hundreds of farmers and hundreds of thousands of cows relying on him to deliver. The need for reliability is prominent, and fortunately for Robert, Isuzu is all that he needs to get him to the most remote corners of New South Wales and back home safely.

And when asked if he’d buy an Isuzu truck in the future, he answered: “Absolutely. 100 per cent. Yes”.