Australia has had to learn over the years to live with the reality of being a technology taker and developed our business accordingly.
In the past, just about everything used in any business could be sourced from an Australian manufacturer. This meant the equipment would have been designed and developed to cope with Australian conditions and be inherently robust enough to endure being used in our industries.
This saw the growth of strong manufacturing of both trucks and trailers for the trucking industry. Originally, British trucks arrived here in Australia, only to be substantially rebuilt in order to be able to function here. In essence they were made in Australia, from imported components.
At the same time the trailer industry developed in a similar fashion, taking ideas from Europe and the US and then beefing them up to be able to survive on our roads and at our excessive masses.
Over time the truck makers adapted their business model as trucks developed. This was the era of beefed up International utes pulling semi trailers, with drivers rebuilding diffs by the side of the road after they blew up.
During this period, truck makers started to develop models which could deal with the conditions using imported and locally manufactured components to build trucks to suit tough Aussie roads.
Out of this era grew the brands which built Australian trucking through the seventies and eighties, like International, Ford, Kenworth, Mack and Volvo. Later the Japanese truck manufacturers started to move in and adapt their trucks from the Japanese domestic market to handle our roads.
Over the years the percentage of components used in the making of a truck, which were custom manufactured here, reduced as the the whole globalisation process took hold. Truck designs were beefed up earlier in the development process to meet global needs.
This has led us to the position we are in now where most trucks on our roads are based on a global design and components which could be made any where in the world, but usually only in one place.
The Australian truck industry is now just a technology taker. Yes, we do have some truck models which are only available here, but they are built from a basic parts catalogue.
This does mean those selling trucks here are at the mercy of decisions, law changes, new technologies and certification from elsewhere in the world. Very little on a modern Australian truck is solely sourced here in Australia and not available anywhere else.
This also brings up issues like the announcement by Hino Trucks in Japan that it had cheated on some emission tests on engines in the past. In fact, none of the engines affected are available here, so in Australia, it is no problem. However, the story will mean the company here in Australia and those selling trucks here will have had a rough week, with questions being asked about an issue, in another hemisphere, which has absolutely no impact on the trucks on sale here.
