With all the models now bedded in there is a stable range from Hino. 300 Series hybrid electric sales have been boosted as operators become aware of the need to cut carbon emissions and that hybrid offers an automatic 20 per cent plus reduction in emissions to their business. 500 Series has bounced back after a difficult 2022 and 700 Series continues to grow.

Demand for new trucks remains solid and Hino are playing the long game, working in the background to develop a robust operation with a business model able to handle any business environment, robust enough not be thrown off kilter, when a crisis occurs. This includes moving away from reliance on short term sales.

“I’m a sales guy and a competitive guy and we’d love to be selling as much as we can, but we also need to make sure we have a sophisticated, mature and robust business model,” says Richard. “We’ve been working really hard over the last two years on this, and we certainly will going forward. We want to create a sustainable and robust business model, grow our capability and capacity.

“We have to make sure that we’ve got another enough capacity and capability in our network to give the customers the sort of or service levels that they require. We’re doing some simplification in our product lineup. There’s an internal term we use, we want to be everything to some customers, not something to lots of customers. We want to really hone in on our key applications and our customer base. We don’t want to be all things to all people.

“We will continue to build brand new infrastructure and facilities, dealership outlets, the number of working bays we’ve got. We are increasing the level of capacity in our parts operations and deepening our partner relationships, both at dealer investor level, but also with some of our customers.”

From a sales perspective 2023 was a good year for Hino, with the company coming close to 6,000 truck sales for the year, at 5,909 sales, which equates to 12.4 per cent of total truck market. 2,264 of those sales were in the medium duty market, where Hino have been consistently strong. Meanwhile, in the light duty market, the company hit 2,928 sales, or 18.2 per cent market share.

“It could have been much stronger if we’d had the supply situation sorted out, particularly on light duty,” says Richard. “We have an order bank around the 6000 figure of customers waiting for their trucks. 12 months is probably too long for comfort, we’d like to drag that back down. Somewhere between six to nine months would be an ideal situation. Having said that, our customers have been patient. They’re happy to wait.

“However, we know that it’s stretching the friendship a little, so we need to, during 2024, drag that down a little bit. 12 months ago, many of the brands, not just ourselves were getting to lead out times towards 18 months. There’s some brands that are, on particular models, even further out than that.

“There was a period of time in 2022, when we were delivering 500 or 600 trucks a month but we were taking orders for 800 or 900 which means our order bank was exploding. It’s now evened out, and that’s not suggesting that the business has slowed. I think the growth has slowed, we’ve seen a cooling of the order intake. It’s still at record levels, and customers are still showing confidence in wanting more supply to meet the contracts and demand for their business.”

Data from the government and from the Truck Industry Council is still suggesting that between now and 2030 the amount of freight tonnage being moved by road in Australia will continue to grow, which will continue to drive demand for more trucks.