When TR Group arrived on the Australian truck and trailer market a few years ago, its first task was one of assessing the truck market and seeing where the business could develop. PowerTorque checks in on how the project is going.
Back in July 2019, TR Group, which had successfully grown a truck and trailer rental and leasing business in New Zealand, made its move into the Australia market with its acquisition of a business, based in Melbourne specialising in renting out skel trailers.
“We did a lot of research leading up to starting in Australia,” says Chris Perry, TR Group General Manager. “We had the market on our radar for about eight or ten years, we were slowly working out how it might work and the differences between the Australian market and the New Zealand market.
“We’ve got a few shared customers, between the countries, the corporates, and we got some feedback from them. We also have a couple of Australian based directors in the business, which was useful. We looked at it and have found that the two markets are, ‘the same but different’.
“We appear to be cousins across the Tasman, but the market is different, the equipment is slightly different and the rules and regulations are different. The big learning was the differences in rules between the states.”
The process of development has seen the purchase of a business with 1,000 trailers in one city transformed into a truck and trailer rental business in three states. There are branches in Melbourne, Brisbane and Newcastle.
“The learning that we needed to do was when we were up and running, spreading our wings and spreading outside of Victoria,” says Chris. “There are things, you’ve got to know. We worked closely with suppliers. We only use Australian made trailers and rely on them to get the right equipment working in the right place.
“In terms of buying equipment, we try and do our planning 18 months out and then order them at least 12 months out. We do a lot of work with our planning, we expend a lot of energy figuring out what equipment we need, the volumes in different categories.
“We have a bit of flexibility around trailers, with some adjustments of build spec possible. With the trucks the spec is locked in. We are planning now, what we want to get before December 2023.”
In TR Group’s operation in New Zealand around 75 per cent of their trailers are leased to customers for the long term. Here the proportion is much lower and a lot of the fleet is going out on day or weekly hire.
Find out more about TR Group here.
