Reader's Rides In Focus

The Fixer

When your job means keeping 340 trucks and utes on the road, reliability is crucial.

NAME: DARRENWRZESIEN / JOB TITLE: NATIONAL MANAGER FLEET & HIRE / FLEET: LACK GROUP TRAFFIC CONTROL

How many D-MAXs are in your fleet?

We’ve taken delivery of about 40 or 50 single-cabs this year, with another 35odd sitting down at the dealer waiting to be fitted out. And we have another 30-something on order already to come through next year. Oh, and that’s not including the dual-cabs! We have 16 of those, too. The single-cabs are all SXs, the dual-cabs are all LS-U or higher because they’re the managers’ cars.

It’s nice to be a manager. What do you do?

About 95 per cent of our business is traffic control and the rest is labour hire. We’re out there working with anyone from small companies to large government agencies, helping them with all aspects of traffic control on projects of any size. Currently we service anywhere from North Brisbane out to Rathdowney, all the way down the eastern seaboard. Then we’ve got Victoria and South Australia, where we’re actively working. And out west we have a depot at Moree and another at Dubbo. I look after 340 vehicles and I have to stay on top of the condition of every one of them.

So, why the D-MAX?

The company shifted to Isuzu around two years ago because they were looking for an automatic diesel, and the Cab Chassis 4x2 was exactly what they needed. In this line of work you quickly work out that manual utes go through clutches like there’s no tomorrow once you put a different driver in them every day. We looked at automatic petrol models from other brands, but they just use way too much fuel! On any given day of the week our utes have about 800kg on the back and the D-MAX’s fuel economy just left everything else in the dust.

So reliability is important, then?

My role is just keeping them on the road, from flat tyres and flat batteries to anything else. That’s where the D-MAX’s dependability makes my job easier. That 3.0L engine is one of the most reliable and efficient engines you can buy—I think they’ve built over 26 million of them worldwide, the 4JJ1, and now with the 4JJ3. And then there’s the build quality! Some of our utes do a lot of kilometres— one of our area managers has a dual-cab and he’s already had his 45,000km service. That’s after just four or five months.

Do you sell them on afterwards?

Oh no, we don’t ever offload them. Never. But in saying that, we have had five vehicles written off this year. A kangaroo jumped out in front of one guy who was doing 100km/h on the highway to Glen Innes, and he swerved off the road to miss it, for example. He was okay! But other times it’s just bad luck. We had one parked on the side of the road and a member of the public fell asleep at the wheel and took out the car. They were okay, too!

So, you control hundreds of utes that are shared randomly among hundreds of tradies. What’s the feedback?

So far it’s that they all love their D-MAXs that they’re driving! When they sign on for a vehicle, it’s the D-MAXs they want. But I know what the utes are like and I know why they want them! It’s just a good, reliable truck.

On any given day of the week our utes have about 800kg on the back and the D-MAX's fuel economy just left everything else in the dust.