Local truck building powers on

So, the Holden, Ford and Toyota factories are closing soon and therefore the Australian manufacturing industry is dead for good. Right?

Wrong. Someone should have told the truck industry.

With a tiny market compared to the US and Chinese juggernauts, Australia's three truck manufacturing plants are clearly not dependent on mass production volume, as is claimed for passenger car building.

The Aussie market is put in perspective when the Chinese market is considered. In 2012 China built 3,020,000 trucks (six tonne GVM and over), compared to our 32,184 in 2015.

Our three truck plants, one in Queensland and two in Victoria, build trucks from largely imported major components.

The Volvo Group's plant kicked off in 1972 and is located on 18.3 acres alongside the M7 in Wacol, south-west of Brisbane. The plant has production lines that build Volvo and Mack trucks, as well as pre-delivering fully built-up UD trucks from Japan.

The engineering section enables unique Australian componentry to be installed and even developed. When the new FH was introduced, the AdBlue tank was too small for long-distance interstate applications. Local engineers wrapped a 185-litre plastic tank around the tail shaft. The unit was built locally, tested in Sweden as well as Australia for Volvo Group specification standards, and made available with the release of the truck.

The group built over 2700 Volvo and Mack trucks in 2014, and the plant can spit out 16 trucks a day. Production time is quoted at eight days from on-line to delivery.

The PACCAR group builds Kenworth Trucks on 45 acres at Bayswater, around 35km east of Melbourne, and the plant has been in production since 1971. Around 65 per cent of every Kenworth built comprises local content.

The local specialist engineering team has enabled Kenworth to build the massive C540 mining truck for Australasian delivery on the existing production line. In 2012, PACCAR Australia was inducted into the Victorian Manufacturing Hall of Fame, and has now delivered its 50,000th Kenworth manufactured in Australia. That’s why you see so many of those iconic rectangular grilles filling your rear-vision mirror.

Iveco inherited the 63-year-old International plant in Dandenong, in Melbourne's south-eastern suburbs, back in 1992, and then dropped International from the product range. Now the plant is used for final preparation of the imported Eurocargo and Stralis trucks and Daily vans, but builds the evergreen ACCO vocational truck from scratch.

Interestingly, the ACCO competes in the same market as imported trucks built in their hundreds of thousands overseas, and is still price and quality competitive. Bang goes the "It's too expensive to build here" argument…

The development of Iveco's Powerstar would have never happened if it was left to the Italian production line, where space is allocated according to market volume. The recent road train version, the 7800, is a classic example of a European truck maker 'Australianising' a series production truck for a local application, namely multi-trailer road trains for use in the Australian outback.

The Australian automotive manufacturing industry is far from dead. In fact for the trucking sector, which is the life-blood of our country, it's thriving.