FLEET MANAGEMENT
STREAMLINING FLEET SOLUTIONS LOOKING FOR AN EXPERT SERVICE PROVIDER THAT KNOWS HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF LIGHT VEHICLES FOR MINING APPLICATIONS? AEROKLAS AUSTRALIA HAS THE RESOURCES AND THE KNOW-HOW TO MANAGE THE ENTIRE BUILD OF THE VEHICLE.
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eroklas Australia acquired vehicle accessory manufacturer TJM in early 2015 and it has since grown its product range extensively. TJM has been in operation since 1973, when Lloyd Taylor, Cliff Jones and Steve Mollenhauer started the journey to becoming the first Australian company to manufacture and distribute quality 4WD equipment. The company’s products are designed, tested and manufactured to thrive in the world’s most famed offroad frontier: the Australian outback. TJM’s rigorous testing and worldclass engineering ensure that every product reaches the highest levels of performance and functionality, enabling it to thrive in the harshest mine conditions. The Aeroklas Australia group also includes market-leading Australian auto-accessory brands Flexiglass and Bocar. Aeroklas Australia can streamline fit-outs for all fleet vehicle needs, regardless of mine-site location. The group’s acquisitions mean the fleet division has access to an array of ready-made products, quality assurance, Australian design rules compliance, workshop fitment capabilities and expert staff to ensure standardisation of vehicle fit-outs. “We’ve got two major retail divisions that can help support with fleet project management and building vehicles, whether that be our TJM retail and distribution network or our newly developed Aeroklas fitment centres,” Aeroklas Australia’s head of customer experience and retail strategy Matt Logan said. “We have launched two Aeroklas fitment centres in Western Australia and one in Queensland.” The fitment centres and qualified staff can deliver solutions that guarantee on-time vehicle delivery via localised centres, personalised service and a reduced risk of damage through overhandling of fleet vehicles. The fleet division covers a full spectrum of vehicle fitment and equipment needs, spanning indemand products such as vehicle protection, suspension upgrades, ute trays, canopies, lighting and communications.
THREE AEROKLAS FITMENT CENTRES HAVE BEEN OPENED IN WA AND QLD.
“The benefit of working with the national fleet team is we’ve got the capability to work across our multiple brands and our other preferred supply partners we work with,” Logan told Australian Mining. “The biggest thing that sets us apart from any of our competitors is we have got the ability to manage and build the entire vehicle.” When it was looking at establishing the fleet division and the fitment centres, Aeroklas Australia found that customers were often having to outsource specialty builds for their vehicles to multiple suppliers, adding to downtime. “We take that one vehicle and fit all of the components given our specialties, and our fleet division has the capability to project manage that successfully and work with procurement managers from the mining divisions to regularly update them on the project build of those cars,” Logan said. “Our divisional capability is quite unique across Australia, where we’re either using our core products or our direct access to supply partners to bring in specialty products that we can then fit to the vehicle.” The company’s specialty is exterior equipment – bull bars, side steps, rear bars and the like – all of which is relevant to mining vehicles. AUSTRALIANMINING
“Our bull bars are renowned for having proprietary development in the products. They have built-in rated recovery points within the bar itself, which provides better strength for a safer recovery,” Logan said. “They also have a unique integrated winch-frame system, so when customers want to put winches in it’s a lot easier to fit the winch into the vehicle.” TJM XGS suspension is designed to elevate a vehicle’s core potential and improve comfort, while refining how it responds to braking, accelerating and cornering. XGS suspension offers outstanding loadcarrying and towing capabilities compared to a standard system. TJM has the XGS 4000 series and the exclusive XGS pace series, a highly-upgradeable remote suspension system. “The quality on the XGS 4000 system is one of the best in its class. It’s a specific application engineering that’s designed and applied to the vehicle, and it also supports the gross vehicle mass and weight upgrades many mining vehicles might need,” Logan said. “A lot of standard suspension cannot accommodate the additional load-bearing accessories being added to mine vehicles. You need to go aftermarket to be able to fit
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suspension that supports your required load-carrying or towing capacity needed to operate a light vehicle on a mine site.” Aeroklas Australia’s resources enable it to provide complete solutions. If a mine site requires canopies for its fleet, Aeroklas can utilise Flexiglass and Aeroklasdesigned canopies, or if the company is after aluminium trays or the like for the back of the vehicle, it can use Bocar’s products. Along with TJM’s vehicle protection accessories comes its communications products, an essential feature for mining vehicles to maintain safety. Antennas and UHF give vehicles the ability to communicate and get help in remote areas. GME, Oricom and Uniden make up TJMs preferred supplier program for communications products, and the Aeroklas fleet division can fit every product from each of the companies TJM offers a three-year warranty on all shocks and struts, with a strong confidence in their reliability. “Our steel and alloy bull bars are also under a three-year warranty. They typically last longer than that, but it depends on the corrosive conditions, the environment that the mine is in and the type of work that the bull bars will be subjected to,” Logan said. AM
