For Deniliquin Freighters principal Russell Tait, the move to Mercedes-Benz was a ‘no brainer’, as he explains
No matter how big or small the business, it’s no easy thing to break years of dedication to a particular product culture. For truck operators, it can be even tougher when driver preference comes into the equation. Still, business is business and for Deniliquin Freighters principal Russell Tait, the move to Mercedes-Benz after decades of North American hardware was simply a ‘no brainer’ after counting the costs, on and off the road
It’s funny how something significant can develop from the most obscure, seemingly insignificant moments. Like, in the pre-dawn chill of a roadhouse in south-western Queensland, two complete strangers strike up a conversation.
On the face of it, the only common denominator is that they’re both drivers soon to be heading somewhere else.
As usual, it kicks off with ‘G’day’ and ‘How ya going?’, and moves along from there. Easy!
They don’t talk for long. Fifteen minutes, maybe. Whatever, they soon enough climb into trucks parked alongside each other, fire the engine, start a new page in the logbook, and with little thought and even less fuss, head down the road on their separate ways.
Those 15 minutes, however, will reveal plenty. Particularly for me.
For starters, the bloke on the other side of the conversation turns out to be Russell Tait, owner of Deniliquin Freighters, and right then, he’s standing alongside a reasonably new Mercedes-Benz prime mover hooked to a roadtrain double.
It’s a 630 horsepower (470kW) top-of-the-tree 2663 model and after a run into north Queensland on one of his occasional, self-imposed sabbaticals behind the wheel, Tait’s heading home to the plains and paddies of southern NSW.
But back to the start. “How do you like the new Benz?”
“Yeah, good,” he says instantly, before casually mentioning he now runs a team of the tall Teutons. Six in fact, all 2663 models and all joining the business within a few weeks of each other at the close of 2017.
By now I’m starting to realise he’s the bloke who pays the bills but memory tells me the company known simply as Deni Freighters has traditionally bought North American gear, mainly Kenworth.
“Not anymore,” he says abruptly. At this point, the morning chill almost turns to steam as invective hits a high note with Tait’s recollection of a “horror time” with a batch of Kenworths powered by 15-litre Cummins exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) engines. In the next breath, though, the calm returns as he quickly details the results of an in-house trial that put an emphatic seal on the decision to make a cultural shift to this new breed of Benz trucks.
Anyway, by now there’s a hint of light in the eastern sky and we each need to make a mile.
“Good talking to you,” he says.
“Yeah, good talking to you, too. Keep it safe!”
“For sure.”
SOUTHERN CHARM
The phone call was a spur of the moment thing and the conversation went something like this: “G’day Russell, it’s Steve Brooks. We spoke a few months back in Queensland about those new Benz trucks of yours.”
“Yeah, I remember. How ya going?”
“Good. Any chance of coming down to Deni to go into a bit more detail about how you came to change to Benz?”
“Yeah, sure. Not a problem.”
And with that, I was in Deniliquin a month or so later with the 62-year-old Tait easily recalling, even reminiscing, on a long and certainly eventful career in trucks and transport.
He’s probably underselling himself when he suggests that good planning and business acumen have been less influential than natural optimism and an innate instinct for opportunity.
Whatever the case, he is today at the helm of an operation with diverse and substantial interests in transport, grain storage and agriculture.
As conversation would quickly reveal, he’s from a farming background and has always been a farm boy at heart, with the rice-growing industry evolving to become the driving passion of a man who says with surprising emotion,
“I think one of the greatest things you can do in life is grow food. It’s good for the soul.”
Like so many farm boys of his vintage, though, a much younger Tait ultimately found his way into trucks, driving for many years in the early incarnations of industry heavyweight Ron Finemore.
Few high profile trucking names can stir as much hyperventilated histrionics as Ron Finemore, but for Tait, he remains proud to be the close personal friend of a man whose loyalty has been invaluable over many decades.
Yet by far the biggest factor in Tait’s largely unscripted business life came with a move in January 1984 to Deniliquin and with it, the purchase of a Mercedes-Benz 1418.
“It was all I could afford at the time,” he says, with the ubiquitous Benz marking his first move into the owner-driver ranks, working as a tow operator for the company he would later own.
More to the point, Deniliquin would become home and over the past 35 years, Tait has immersed himself in the local community at almost every level, even to the point where he’s chairman of the famous Deniliquin Ute Muster.
“I love this town and love being involved in the community,” he says with total conviction.
“Like most places and most communities, it has its challenges but for me, it’s just a great place to be.”
Of course, much has changed since that fateful move in 1984. It is, for instance, a smiling Tait who concedes that the iconic but somewhat diminutive Benz was “a reasonably good truck” but with the broad grin still intact, not remotely good enough to have any nostalgic influence on the decision to buy a batch of Benz trucks more than 30 years later.
“I can tell you it was a bit of a shock getting into a 1418 after coming out of a Kenworth SAR with an 8V92TA [Detroit] pulling livestock for Ron Finemore,” he laughs.
Back then, Deniliquin Freighters was owned by the local Purtill family, which still has substantial interests around town and it’s an emphatic Tait who expresses great regard for the opportunities and assistance that have flowed from his association with the family.
“They’re good people and all these years later, we still have a strong relationship,” he says with obvious gratitude.
By his own admission, though, he has never been shy about jumping at opportunities and when the prospect of taking a 50 per cent stake in the trucking business with business partner Graham Lawson came a few years after moving to Deniliquin, he didn’t need much of a push to take the plunge.
“Graham and I were a good partnership,” Tait reflects. “I was the optimist, he was the conservative. It was the right balance.”
Buoyed by strong growth prospects, he concedes it was perhaps inevitable they would accept a 1988 offer to take full control of the company.
The growth they envisaged steadily became fact and by the late ‘90s Deniliquin Freighters was a company with 22 trucks and, as Tait puts it, “a heap of subbies”. The customer base was impressive – Sunicrust Bakeries, Dairy Farmers, Graincorp, Sunrice and various fuel companies as well as a burgeoning grain storage operation.
North American trucks were preferred, with Freightliner and International hauling most commodities except for fuel, where Kenworth was the truck of choice. Occasionally, a European brand would join the operation to gauge if there were any benefits but for the most part, it was all the way with USA.
In business terms, however, change was on the horizon as one century slid towards another.
“By around 1999 I was keen on rationalising,” Tait comments.
“We had trucks running everywhere and looking back, I think we were both burning out a bit.”
Indeed, in 2001, Lawson sold his interest and from that point on, Tait has held the reins wholly and solely, except for the vital involvement of wife Vicki.
Ultimately, the bread business went, milk and fuel tankers were sold off, and Deniliquin Freighters was free to concentrate almost entirely on its relationship with Sunrice, running a company-owned fleet of 10 trucks or so alongside full-time subbies and tow operators.
This was the ideal outcome for Tait. “I genuinely love the rice industry and the people in it,” he says emphatically, “to the point where I even have a few rice farms of my own.
“If I was ever going to concentrate on one form of freight, there was no doubt it would be rice.”
TRUCK TALK
Kenworth has been part of the Deni Freighters operation for decades. Sure, there was a dabbling with Freightliner, “but overall, it wasn’t great,” he exclaims.
His regard for the Kenworth brand dates back to his early days driving for Ron Finemore and with few exceptions, K-series cab-overs and various conventional models with a mix of Cat and Cummins engines gave Tait little reason to look elsewhere. Until!
Fast track to the closing days of 2012 and the delivery of four new Kenworths: two K200 ‘big cab’ models with what Tait describes as “all the goodies”, and two T909s with an extra axle behind the drive tandem for a relatively shorthaul roadtrain double application hauling two 30-tonne containers of export rice in southern NSW.
By this time, of course, Cat had made its callous decision to abandon the truck engine business and consequently, all four of the new Kenworths were powered by 15-litre Cummins EGR engines rated at 580hp (433kW) in the cab-overs and 615hp (459kW) in the T9s.
In a fleet of 10 trucks or so, Tait says he could see no reason why this newest Kenworth and Cummins combination wouldn’t continue to be just as durable as any others. Sure, EGR was a system devised to achieve emissions compliance but Cummins wouldn’t introduce it without being sure it’s right, would they!
Problems, however, were quick to surface. “Electrical and sensor issues started from day one,” he explained. Soon after, and with no sign of resolution to those initial issues, the turbocharger and EGR component problems that would ultimately label this generation of Cummins engines ‘the worst ever’, started to make their presence felt.
For the next four years, Deniliquin Freighters endured what Tait vehemently describes as: “A fair dinkum horror story. There was just no peace of mind for any of us, including the drivers. No one knew when or where something would go wrong. You just knew it would go wrong, soon and often.
“No one had an answer, and certainly not Kenworth or Cummins. Seriously, it was a bloody nightmare for Vicki and me. For everyone, really. Profitability took a huge hit and there wasn’t much empathy coming our way, either.”
The worst, he says, was the 2016–17 financial year when repair and maintenance costs rose to $350,000, with the vast percentage of that figure attributable to the four EGR-equipped Kenworths.
“But that’s a figure that doesn’t include the loss of productivity with trucks broken down or sitting in a dealership,” Tait remarks with a shake of the head.
They had to go, and in late 2017 they did, with all four Kenworths traded on a batch of six Mercedes-Benz 2663 models.
So, why Benz?
Tait takes a few moments to gather his thoughts before citing a series of events which, in many ways, made the decision inevitable and over the course of the next 12 months would deliver the results he believed were entirely reasonable to expect.
First, the assertion that Deni Freighters was a Kenworth fleet only and therefore a lost cause for any other brand, had not deterred Mercedes-Benz operatives from at least making contact and offering a truck for trial. As Tait puts it: “They were making a real effort to get their truck into the market and better still, they knew their product. No one else really came near us, so Benz at least showed some initiative.”
On the suggestion that perhaps few brands were interested in trading the four Kenworths (after all, the second-hand value of Kenworths with 15-litre Cummins EGR engines isn’t inspiring), a matter-of-fact Tait says simply: “All I know is the Benz people were keen and we were certainly ready for a change.”
Besides, early reports on the new Benz family were encouraging. Contacting a few people who were already running the new models and whose opinions he respected, the feedback was undeniably favourable, particularly on performance and fuel.
Critically, the arrival of a 580hp 2658 demo unit also went some way towards appeasing a significant concern for Tait. Driver acceptance! He is quick to admit good drivers are hard to come by in this day and age, and equally, suggests many trucking companies do not place enough emphasis on the role and influence of drivers.
Nonetheless, in an operation that rigidly embraces a ‘one truck, one driver’ regime, he suspected there would be a level of dissension from those drivers with an entrenched liking for the Kenworth image, and specifically those accustomed to the space and finish of a ‘big cab’ K200.
Even so, the 2658 demo unit satisfied him that the new Benz at least has the best sleeper of all current European contenders. “In my estimation, it’s the pick of them,” he asserts.
That said, however, an adamant Tait is quick to reaffirm that commercial considerations were the driving factors behind the move to Mercedes-Benz. It’s fair enough, he agrees, to suggest that Deni Freighters would’ve probably remained content with Cummins-powered Kenworths for many years to come if it hadn’t been for the flaws of the EGR engine.
“There wouldn’t have been a reason to change,” he says, before abruptly adding, “but we couldn’t just keep bleeding money off the bottom line the way we were.”
In the final analysis, it all came down to purchase cost, maintenance costs and fuel costs.
On purchase cost and the assertion that Benz ‘bought’ his business, a blunt Tait suggests anyone who thinks there’s any such thing as a cheap truck is kidding themselves. “Of course they were cheaper than Kenworth. Name a truck that isn’t?” he asks.
On maintenance costs, Tait says he had rarely considered a fully maintained operating lease before, but with his linehaul trucks generally covering just 150,000km a year, it made good economic sense to accept a four-year, fully maintained operating lease. The attraction of 60,000km service intervals also didn’t skip his attention.
On fuel costs, however, he was loathe to accept anyone’s figures. He had to find out for himself, and so he did.
WEEKEND WORKOUT
Tait admits the 2658 demo unit effectively showed a propensity for strong performance and frugal fuel efficiency from the day it started work in Deniliquin. Yet, while Mercedes-Benz was already the preferred brand to replace the troublesome Kenworth quartet, was the 2658 the best of the breed for the company’s requirements, which range from B-double work between the NSW Riverina and Melbourne, sometimes to Sydney and Brisbane, and occasional roadtrain runs to North Queensland and even Darwin?
It was a question that found an answer over a busy weekend in late August 2017 when Tait and three colleagues – drivers Scott Wallace and John MacLennan, and senior co-ordinator and former driver Dean Clent – took four trucks on a test run of more than 1,600km across a wide range of conditions.
Hauling largely identical B-double sets at precisely loaded weights – three units grossed exactly 62.5 tonnes and another just 50kg lighter at 62.45 tonnes – and with drivers spending between 20 and 30 per cent driving time in each of the units, Tait admits the results for the different Benz models were as surprising as they were impressive.
The contenders were a 530hp (396kW) 2653 model borrowed from Finemore Transport, the existing 2658 trial unit and a flagship 630hp 2663 model from Mercedes-Benz’s demonstrator fleet. The fourth unit was one of his Kenworth K200s with a 580hp Cummins EGR engine, effectively providing a line in the sand to gauge any advance in fuel economy.
Importantly, to overcome variances in the odometer readings of each truck, overall mileage for the exercise was taken from map distances rather than the trip counter of each unit.
Day one saw the trucks driven from Deniliquin to Wodonga, up the Hume to Coolac for the first driver change, then through rolling hills to Cootamundra and Temora before more open spaces from West Wyalong to Parkes, Narromine and Nyngan.
Read our review of the Mercedes-Benz 2653, here
Day two started with each driver moving into a different truck for the stretch from Nyngan to Cobar and across to Hillston for the final driver change, and the home stretch to Hay and back to Deniliquin.
In a nutshell, the least economical of the Mercedes-Benz models was the 2658, yet it consumed almost 150 litres less than the Kenworth with its EGR Cummins. For the record, the Cummins consumed 1,120 litres and the 2658 Benz, 974 litres.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of all, however, were the returns of the 13-litre 2653 model and the biggest of the Benz bunch, the 16-litre 2663 flagship. Just one litre of fuel separated the two, with the 530hp truck consuming 957 litres and its big brother, 958 litres.
Sure, all the Benz engines run selective catalytic reduction emissions systems and use a relatively small amount of AdBlue which must, of course, be taken into consideration when considering overall fuel cost. However, as Tait emphasised, AdBlue cost would be “a long way short” of the substantial diesel fuel savings delivered by the Mercedes-Benz models.
Anyway, when it was all boiled down, the weekend workout was the final seal that Mercedes-Benz trucks would be soon joining Deniliquin Freighters, and that those trucks would all be the top-shelf 2663 model.
Still, they haven’t replaced all the company’s trucks of North American heritage. As Tait is quick to point out, he’s more than happy with the ongoing durability and viability of a couple of Kenworth T650s with 15-litre Cummins Gen II engines, a T658 with a 550hp (410kW) Cat, and a heavy-duty, stunningly maintained Kenworth C501 with a 600hp (447kW) Cat.
Pride of place, however, probably goes to a Mack Titan with a 620hp (462kW) Gen II Cummins and more than 2.5 million kilometres to its credit. “And it’s still a great truck,” says a satisfied Tait.
There’s no question, however, that his greatest satisfaction and indeed his greatest relief, is definitely with the new Benz breed. More than a year after the trucks first went to work at Deniliquin Freighters, not one had been stopped at the side of the road with a breakdown of any sort. “And that’s a bloody first, I’ll tell you,” he asserts.
Meantime, after the horrors of exploding repair and maintenance costs in the 2016–17 financial year, 2017–18 costs were less than a quarter of the preceding year.
“The Benz trucks so far have proven to be a great replacement for the EGR Cummins-powered Kenworths,” Tait succinctly concludes, citing “much cheaper running costs regarding maintenance and fuel, and much safer vehicles with all the new technology”.
“Ultimately, they’re a more profitable vehicle to operate.”
Simple as that!
DRIVER DIVISIONS
On first impressions, Scott Wallace (pictured) is a relaxed sort of bloke. A Deniliquin local for most of his life and a truck driver of 30 years’ experience who goes about his daily duties in an easy, quietly considered way.
As he puts it, a truck is a tool to do a job. Nothing more. Nothing less. Sure, no one wants to drive an uncomfortable, unreliable or indeed, unsafe truck, and for those who care, pride and preference certainly come into the equation. Still, at the end of the day, a truck is just something a driver needs to do his or her job.
Most of Wallace’s five years at Deniliquin Freighters have been at the helm of Kenworths and Freightliner’s Argosy, and whilst he can easily appreciate why some drivers form strong preferences for a particular brand – notably Kenworth – sometimes to the exclusion of all other makes and models, he isn’t necessarily one of them.
It is, perhaps, for these reasons that Wallace was asked to be part of the fuel economy trial comparing three Mercedes-Benz models with a Cummins EGR-powered Kenworth K200.
He had already driven the 2658 Benz demonstrator in the Deniliquin Freighters fleet, and despite the good-natured and sometimes not-so good-natured ribbing of other drivers, admits his first impressions of the new Benz were “very positive”.
The Benz was, in fact, his first experience in a European truck of any description and after the weekend fuel trial comparing the various models, admits he was more than happy, even keen, to accept a new 2663 model when they started arriving at Deni Freighters. Not everyone, however, shares his enthusiasm.
Whatever, “It doesn’t worry me what anyone else says or thinks. I’ll take the comfort any day. But every driver has different views and that’s fine with me.”
Performance of the big banger Benz during the fuel trial was, he remarks, especially impressive, but only after first coming to grips with the powertrain’s propensity for dropping extremely deep into the rev range before making a downshift.
Now, more than a year after the fuel run, with more than 120,000km behind the wheel and fully accustomed to the operational traits of the engine and 12-speed automated transmission combination, as well as the various electronic functions, Wallace says he’s entirely content with the Benz.
Personally, he finds the bunk more than adequate. He is, however, quick to point out he’s not a particularly big bloke and compared to a big cab’ K200, he can understand why some bigger drivers aren’t quite as satisfied with the Benz bunk.
Similarly, while the top-shelf Benz cab sits much higher than anything he has previously driven, he doesn’t rate cab access a negative.
He is not alone, however, in offering criticism of the large mirror housings which impede view at roundabouts and the like. “Other than that, I find nothing to really whinge about,” he says with a grin.
“I’m happy to stay in it. A hundred per cent.”