The fleet at Collins Transport is one of the most iconic and well-maintained groups of trucks and trailers you can find across the country.
Pushing around 200 trucks and 480 trailers, the operation is based out of Adelaide but handles transport between its home city, Melbourne and Sydney.
The business was founded by John Collins 60 years ago, and has now carried down to the third generation of the Collins family.
Part of the continued success that the transport operator has found has been thanks to its focuses on safety and efficiency – a big part of its core values.
One look at the certifications that Collins holds exemplifies this. Being a refrigerated transport specialist, and key part of the cold chain, means no shortcuts in ensuring products make their way from place to place with care.
In recent years, the Collins team has looked at the benefits that PBS vehicles can offer to the fleet, and results have been strong so far.
“Since about three years ago, we started to go down the PBS track with our vehicles,” says Collins National Workshop Manager Carl Hamilton.
“It’s had several benefits. From a business side of things, it allows us to run high productivity vehicles. So that, on its own, is a plus.
“We’ve grown the B triple fleet through that, as well as double road trains, A doubles. So now those types of higher productivity units are probably the larger part of our fleet now.
They all operate under the PBS system.
“As the fleet has expanded into more PBS units, from an operations point of view, we get more freight carried for less kilometres travelled.”
Carl’s role has him overseeing 60 staff in the Collins workshop in Adelaide, with techs including diesel mechanics for the trucks as well as those specialising in trailers.
All of the maintenance and mechanical work is done on-site, with the workshop well-equipped to handle any issue that may arise.
While working with more complex combinations in the PBS space comes with its challenge, Carl says it’s all a matter of adjusting and learning the best approaches.
“From a workshop point of view, we’re learning more about resetting our preventative maintenance schedules, because everything’s working a little bit harder,” he says.
“For example, a truck that we were used to, once upon a time, might have done a million kilometres, might only do 800,000 now. We’ve still got a mixture of a fleet with B doubles, B triples and road trains.
“We’re just still working that out now, and we’re nearly on top of that as far as preventative maintenance, which is critical to us. We don’t like any of our trucks breaking down, so we try to be on top of everything from starter motors and alternators and gearboxes, right through to the engine.
“That’s the focus of the next 12 months, – getting that all of those processes more accurate than it they are now.”
Expanding fleet safety
When looking at how to best continue to make the trucks and trailers in the fleet safer, Carl and the workshop team looked to Knorr-Bremse’s safety solutions.
Safety solutions such as Electronic Stability Program (ESP) became compulsory for many heavy vehicles from January 2022, and from February 2025 was also expanded to cover goods vehicles above 3.5 tonnes (ADR 35/07).
This is in addition to Advanced Emergency Braking Systems (AEBS), which are now mandatory in new heavy goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes Gross Vehicle Mass (GVM) as of February 1, 2025 (ADR 97/00).
For trailers, Knorr-Bremse also offers Trailer Electronic Braking Systems (TEBS), which includes the functionality of Roll Stability Program (RSP).
Knowing this, the Collins team had to ensure not only that their fleet was up to standard, but also equipped with all the best safety solutions available.
“We’ve had Knorr-Bremse’s solutions on our trailers for quite a while, and we found great safety benefits from them,” Carl explains.
“When electronic braking systems became mandatory, we took a lot more interest in it, and started looking at the trucks and trailers that didn’t have EBS yet. I’m talking across the whole fleet, because there’s a fair bit of older equipment in it.
“As we got more involved with getting that installed and started renewing and purchasing equipment, we did a bit of a campaign where we backtracked a little bit and fit a lot more of our trailers with Knorr-Bremse systems.
“Now the majority of our fleet is EBS equipped, and it’s all Knorr-Bremse.”
The next step after identifying the need for installation of the Knorr-Bremse systems was to organise new trucks and trailers to get fit with them, and for the older equipment to be retrofitted.
“We did it all in house with our workshop guys,” Carl explains.
“Not every bit of our equipment is fitted with it, because we’ve got a large number of trailers. But all the equipment that we use on high productivity routes is definitely fitted with.
“We do pretty much everything in house for anything we need in the workshop. I’d say that means we’ve got a good team of mechanics.
“The EBS is quite sensitive, which is a good thing. When you first feel the Roll Stability Program cutting in, if you’ve never been used to it before, it’s actually a quite different feeling.
“From a company and a driver point of view, now that we’re used to it, we’re happy to have it on, happy to have it working, and happy to have safer trucks and trailers.”
While it has been a relatively seamless transition to working with Knorr-Bremse systems on the trucks and trailers, Carl says it did still involve a learning process for the team when it came to how to best maintain their equipment.
Working to perform preventative maintenance means the Collins workshop team is always thinking ahead to ensure nothing goes wrong out on the road.
“We had to learn and get some training done,” Carl says.
“Now that everything’s up and running, fault codes have been cleared, it’s all quite easy to maintain.
“It’s now a part of our service process. When a trailer comes in for service, we can plug in and check if there’s any fault codes.”
With the amount of PBS vehicles in the fleet, there is plenty more that Collins has to consider when it comes to the safety of their trucks.
Among other things, this includes fatigue management technology as well as other advanced safety systems.
“We’ve got Guardian cameras inside all of our trucks for fatigue management,” Carl says.
“And for all of our later model trucks, and for certain PBS routes we’re having AEBS on the vehicles with a camera and radar on the front. Apart from collision mitigation this system also has cruise control, lane departure warning – all those sort of things that offer safety to our drivers.
“That’s actually mandatory on some routes, but not on others. But we’re fitting that to all of our trucks now and that’s working well too.”
Workshop challenges
More transport businesses across the country are increasingly facing the challenge of driver and staff shortages.
The driving workforce continues to get older, with Australia having one of the highest percentage of drivers over 55 in the world. Add this onto tens of thousands of vacant driving roles across the country, and you have a major problem.
The same can be seen when it comes to diesel mechanic roles. There is an increasingly growing skills gap, while other industries which require mechanical workers can be seen as more attractive to prospective young apprentices.
Carl says the Collins workshop is always taking on new apprentices with the hope of growing their skills and keeping them on the team.
“Mostly we grow our own people,” he says.
“We’ve got a very large number of apprentices, and that’s both juniors and adults. It’s probably more adult apprentices than junior apprentices.
“Because we’ve got so many different areas within the business, that’s including truck drivers, forklift drivers, wash bay and trade assistance, we’re always having a look at those areas too.”
Carl says there are often key traits that most of his diesel and trailer mechanics share that the Collins workshop looks for.
“In particular for the workshop, I’m always looking for reliability and trustworthiness,” he says.
“If they’re have those qualities, you just look at them and go, I think that person might be good in our workshop.
“In terms of the age profile, we’ve got some adult apprentices that are in their 40s and some in their 20s, and then we’ve got some young guys that have really just started, but are really eager to learn.
“Most of our mechanics are grown from within, and we take great pride in that.”
