From local home paper rounds to distributor of the largest newspaper in Victoria, Trevor Lodge knows the importance of commitment
From local home paper rounds to distributor of the largest newspaper in Victoria, Trevor Lodge knows the importance of commitment and reliability.
At the age of 60, Trevor has lived in Australia for half his life, giving up the spectacular lakes and landscape of neighbouring New Zealand to move across the Tasman when he was 30 years old.
Starting out on a home delivery run for his local newsagent, Lodge’s desire to manage his own business was almost realised when he saw a for sale sign in the newspaper for his local newsagents’ delivery truck nearly three decades ago.
Despite being beaten to the punch on the purchase, the lucky country lived up to its name and six months later he was contacted by the disgruntled buyer with an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Now operating a self titled business in addition to a second sub contracted courier vehicle, aptly titled Kiwi Magic Transport, Lodge delivers over 11,000 copies of Victoria’s Herald Sun Newspaper seven nights a week within Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs.
Despite being one of many sub contractors delivering Victorians their daily dose of news, his deliveries come straight from a silver platter, quite literally.
It’s not just the sleek newly designed cab of Lodges 2008 Isuzu FRR 600-S that instantly catches the eye – the van body features unique polished stainless steel sides.
The rationale behind his distinctive truck design comes from a desire to always go one step better.
“My last Isuzu featured a steel tray with a stainless steel rear end and LED lights along the sides and it attracted a lot of attention, so I thought for an all-new truck I had to go one step further,” he says.
“I’m a big fan of outdoing myself.”
A notion clearly understood by his fellow truck drivers, with the new stainless steel body having a magnetic effect on onlookers.
Isuzu has been the truck of choice for Lodge since he purchased his own vehicle back in 1979. Nine Isuzus later, he is extremely pleased to be driving the all-new 2008 model.
“The new Isuzu is fantastic, it drives really well and is very comfortable, in keeping with all the Isuzus I’ve had over the years,” he says.
Driving the FRR 600-S, with a second FRR 600 being driven by the driver of Kiwi Magic Transport, Lodge specified the Automated Manual Transmission (AMT) in both vehicles, an option available for the first time in selected medium duty Isuzu trucks.
“The AMT is fantastic for the stop and start driving around the suburbs. My subbie has also commented about how easy it makes stopping on hills, with absolutely no roll back in neutral,” he says.
“Personally, I’d have to say I’m most pleased to see the vertical exhaust has been removed. It’s particularly beneficial for me with the stainless steel body as I don’t have to try and remove all the black soot” (not that this is a problem anymore given the all-new range’s extremely low particulate emissions).
Originally purchasing Isuzu after shopping around on price, it is reliability and whole of life costing that has kept Lodge true to the brand.
“Reliability is really important to me, if I don’t get the papers out to the newsagents by 6am, then no one gets their morning paper,” he says.
“Working overnight makes reliability even more important; you can’t afford to have a breakdown at 3 am, but my last Isuzu did over 500,000 km and never broke down.
“Not to mention the resale value. I change over about every three years and I always get a great trade in. The staff at Winter and Taylor, Geelong know how well I look after my trucks, they’ll offer me a trade-in price over the phone, although perhaps that has something to do with my choice of attention-seeking body fitment.”