TOTAL COMMERCIAL VEHICLES

at auction have not been around long enough to gather dust.

If ongoing labour shortages have placed additional pressures on workshops, the growing second-hand market in addition to the necessity for companies to keep working older vehicles well beyond the threshold of their life cycle to keep up with demand, has in some cases, compounded existing issues for those fleets with already exhausted resources.

The continued explosion in rental and leasing demand, as evidenced by the expansion seen by TR Group and Budget Rent a Truck, both of whom have charted strongly as fleets this year, make them companies to watch in the future. For those looking to expand their operations and, with that, the investments in assets and equipment so often required to do so, strategic acquisition remains something of a bulwark to such a fast-changing and volatile environment. Silk Contract Logistics, again added to its portfolio having notably bought out Fremantle Freight & Storage; Centurion came to an agreement with the highly-regarded South West Express in Western Australia, and Allied Transport sold to New

Zealand-based company Freightways. Perhaps the biggest story of the year was the acquisition of Glen Cameron Group by DHL, a major move that has seen the German-owned carrier bolster its mobile asset stocks, considerably.

Last year saw the debut of the Premier Commercial Fleet Guide during a period of big changes and market realignment among some of the major players in the national road transport sector. During that time Team Global Express, having been divested from Toll Group, made a splash rebranding itself and seriously committed to battery electric vehicles, a category, this time next year, we shall have seen significantly grow. Expect it to have a real presence in the Guide.

The uncertainty of the last 12 months, as far as industry trends go, cannot be ignored. While the big players look to consolidate, mergers and acquisitions, especially from foreign ownership — see Skyroad Logistics — are likely to pick up.

Speaking of which. Increased uptake of PBS vehicles and a growing trend for high productivity solutions, is seeing more of the established players and a few of the upstarts, turn to innovation where greater access, facilitated by less bureaucracy, permits it. In this space some operators are even doubling down. Quite literally in the case of Cahill Transport, whose growing PBS fleet is twice the size of where it was 12 months ago.

For others it’s business as usual — big business. Followmont Transport, which resumes the cracking pace it began setting as a business at the beginning of the decade, has announced it will invest a further $15 million in commercial vehicles in 2023 after outlaying $14 million last year.

Indeed, one of the key objectives of Prime Mover, as a platform, is to deduce the various forces within the industry, how these forces shape it; and what changes, as there inevitably will be in such a whirlwind industry, have taken place year-on-year.

The aim, naturally, is to continue to grow this Guide so a more comprehensive picture of commercial road transport can be accomplished, dissected and invariably studied. As with any exercise like this one data is approximate and mined via the means available at the time. Late last year

Mover circulated a survey of which many fleets volunteered to respond in regard to unit numbers as they pertained to total commercial vehicles, prime movers, total trailers and PBS-approved combinations. The responses to this survey along with annual reports, recent records, along with information available in the public domain have provided raw figures from which the charts have been derived. The Premier Commercial Fleet Guide foremost aims to help benchmark these businesses as they move, grow and adapt to the current market.

In the rare case where a conspicuous absence is apparent in a category, this has likely been the outcome of a specific request made by the company, reluctant engagement, or the lack of current