They are not just good on fuel, they are awesome.”Īccording to Terry, ABS Transport was offered one of the first Actros 2653 to be sold in Australia. But as the majority of our work is standard linehaul we found the 13-litre provided us with additional benefits and it has paid off. There’s no other way to say it, the 2658s were excellent on fuel. After three months trialling a new Mercedes-Benz Actros 2658, Terry says he was suitably impressed by the 16-litre capabilities it offered. Until then Terry had been running another prominent European truck and American rigs for the more extreme long haul assignments. The next seismic shift in the business eventuated when Daimler approached ABS Transport with test model trucks back in 2014. “At the end of the day we’ll do wideloads, dangerous goods ¬ whatever is going.” “It’s amazed me somewhat considering there’s been so much doom and gloom associated with local manufacturing,” he says. He attributes the increase in volume to the upsurge in building across the country, an event unlike anything he’s seen since the Global Financial Crisis hit. Terry says there has been a noticeable demand this year for shipping manufacturing equipment like presses and cutting tools such as industrial guillotines. The sons, who have long since earned their stripes in linehaul, now work in operations.ĪBS Transport carts most everything from general freight to building products, with aluminium and glass representative of its nominal operations in which a B-double will get dispatched daily from one of its four depots. Their first names make up the company’s name. As a result we attracted some sizeable jobs with the likes of Pioneer Asphalt and it started to flourish from that point on.”īoth Terry’s sons Aaron and Shannon work full time with the business. “I was lucky enough to quote on a couple of interstate jobs and we went out in the market with what was, by most standards, a pretty hard-sell. In 1985 Terry returned to road transport and secured his first interstate jobs, the crest of a wave he recalls, which he rode carting general goods now with a young family who he can’t know, at the time, will all play instrumental roles in the fledgling business he is fast building.īy 1989, with life partner Celeste also now a business partner, he needed more than two hands to count his growing commercial vehicle fleet. Another stint followed working on-site repairs for four years, which included restoring trucks and selling them. That would be Celeste Warn who he wed in 1980, putting a termination albeit temporarily, to his initial flirtation with truck driving. I was sub-contracting for a couple of major companies and that lasted for about five years. In the beginning the trips were subcontracting interstate only as far as regional Victoria, much of it involving flat top trailer. Terry Warn, ABS Transport Director, started out in 1975 with a truck he had restored while working as a diesel apprentice at Patterson Cheney in Dandenong. A mixed fleet of 46 trucks includes 12 linehaul contractors and a handful of tow operators for when ABS Transport needs its 90 tonne rated road trains headed to Perth or Darwin uncoupled, a more or less negligible revenue stream from days gone by. Of the 70 trailers the business currently operates nearly 70 per cent are open trailers to allow easy crane access. In any given week one of its drivers could have easily exited a checkpoint in Guatemala, made it to California and returned to illustrate a comparative intercontinental distance. Melbourne-based ABS Transport knows all too well the cumulative strain of sprinting road trains into battering crosswinds over the plateau of the Eastern seaboard as far as Brisbane and back daily – for the best part of four decades. After the truck itself, diesel fuel is often the second biggest expense a fleet manager must factor into an annual budget where the necessity to find a competitive edge is perhaps only outweighed by constant pressures to reduce operational costs. Not only has the European truck helped to facilitate major gains in fuel efficiency, it’s been instrumental in shaping a new mindset.įuel remains the lifeblood of most transport operations. Introducing the Mercedes-Benz Actros 2653 into its fleet has shifted expectations for linehaul specialist ABS Transport.
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