Kununarra, in Western Australia is known for being as remote as it is beautiful, and for nearly 50 years local operator JSW Holdings has been running across this challenging landscape, where it’s a tough truck life in the Outback.
For Kununarra based owner operator Peter Woodhead of JSW Holdings, navigating his business in such remote territory has posed many challenges since his father established the business in 1975. But with the right people, services and trucks, Peter has taken no shortcuts and has witnessed the success and longevity of the JSW business.
Starting off as a brick manufacturer, JSW has expanded the scope of their products and services over the years, with concrete, plant hire, civil contracts and aggregate supply forming the main part of their business offering today. Despite these business changes throughout the decades, one thing has remained the same, JSW’s trust and confidence in their UD truck products.
“Probably the biggest pressure is our isolation with part supply and getting and keeping things running,” says Peter. “Obviously needing to have a backup of parts. People are also a big shortage, I know we’re not alone with that but it’s pretty hard to entice people to come up and live in extreme conditions at the moment.
“During winter it’s beautiful up here, with nice 25 to 30-degree days. But from November until April it’s 40 degrees, wet and an afternoon shower can see 25-50mm of rainfall. Roads become impassable, so we’ve got to be careful where we go and don’t go depending on the time of year.
“The distance we travel annually varies due to the kind of work that we do, but it can range from 100,000 to 250,000km. Engine hours are probably more. It’s a lot of work off road on dirt roads so weg enerally reach speeds of 40-50km/h.”
But despite the locational challenges, Peter has said that his UD Trucks have provided a solid and reliable platform to keep JSW running and with minimum downtime.
“We’ve got a UD CW 40 out the back,” says Peter. “It’s a 1983 model and it’s the first UD we bought. It was purchased as a 6-wheel tipper. The customer decided they wanted to go to ‘semi’,so it was converted to a prime mover and towed a bogie tipper around for probably five years of its life and then as things got bigger, we converted it back to a tipper.”
It truly is a tough truck life in the Outback.
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