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NEWS
New Isuzus for Pickerings
To service the expanding needs of one of its clients, 20 new F Series trucks will hit the road with this big Victorian fleetFrom its humble beginnings transporting fruit and vegetables to local markets, 60 years ago, The Pickering Transport Group has risen to become one of Australia's leading professional freight carriers.
Pickering Transport in Swan Hill in Victoria employs over 300 staff, providing a range of road transport services for a list of local and interstate customers that includes one of Australia’s biggest supermarkets.
This year, the third-generation family business secured a contract with the Coca Cola Company to service Mid-west and Southern NSW adding to their previous contract in Northern Victoria with the drinks giant.
In order to ensure they had the fleet numbers going into this new venture, Pickering’s bought 20 new Isuzu F Series trucks from Mildura Truck Centre.
Justin Pickering, Group Sales Manager and grandson of the company’s founder, says that adding these new trucks to the Pickerings fleet – which already boasts 20 Isuzus in the line-up – has enabled the business to hit the ground running with their new client.
"We’re keen to grow this side of the business, so once we’d secured the new contract and renewed the old one we had to buy 20 trucks in one go, and Isuzu had everything we were looking for and the stock on hand to do it.
"We have a very good relationship with Mildura Truck Centre – they’ve given us great service since we started with them.
"We have an Isuzu dealer in every depot area that performs any maintenance, as they’re all on a fixed schedule. They’ve been very proactive, and it’s all been excellent.
"Any changes we made were mainly to the body, as the trucks themselves are great. We did add long-range fuel tanks, since we service as far as Bourke and Cobar in rural NSW," Justin said.
The trucks feature state of the art beverage bodies, segregated for pallets of cartons so drivers can easily access orders.
Justin’s FVDs are each fitted with an Allison six-speed automatic, making them perfect for vocational applications with high idle time or frequent stop-starting.
"The trucks manage between 40,000 and 70,000km a year but it varies, depending on the job. It might be stop-and-go type work delivering product to stores, or some real tough outback jobs.
"In Bendigo for instance the work is very metro, they’re ducking and diving down alleys and under awnings.
"But a Dubbo run means driving 750km just to deliver the product, so it’s big kilometers, across floodways and driving through rivers. The trucks handle both routes very well, I’ve been really impressed with them so far.
"They haven’t struggled – we bought the 300 horsepower units instead of 260 so we’ve definitely got enough power underfoot,” Justin said.
The FVD 165-300’s six-cylinder Isuzu 6HK1 engine features a Diesel Oxidation Catalyst (DOC) for low maintenance and unparalleled dependability. It boasts 221kW of power at 2400rpm and torque of 981Nm at 1450 rpm.
"Safety is paramount for us. On the Bourke and Cobar runs there is big mileage and a lot of wildlife out there to dodge so all the trucks are fitted with bullbars too," Justin said.
"Our drivers need to be able to access the product safely, we don’t want them climbing around too much, so we need bodies and trucks we can rely on."
Justin’s new FVD models come with driver and passenger airbags with seatbelt pretensioner, an ECE-R29 compliant cab, Anti-lock Braking System (ABS), and cruise control as standard.
"We’ve got some Isuzus at our depots that are over 10 years old, so we knew we could rely on them," Justin concluded.
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Written byTrucksales Staff
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