Although a relatively small player in the Australian truck market, in Europe MAN is one of the big six truck brands, all of which control between 15 and 16 percent of the total medium and heavy duty truck market.
After a career in several countries around Europe and Brazil with Scania, global MAN CEO, Alexander Vlaskamp moved across to, fellow Traton Group brand, MAN, a couple of years ago.
The development of the military trucks for the defence forces is a partnership, between MAN and Rheinmetall. The vehicles are delivered to the Australian Defence Forces through Rheinmetall Military Vehicles, which is a joint venture between MAN and the truck builder. The process also involves a joint partnership, including Penske, providing the network of service locations, where those Penske locations close to local military bases can look after the vehicles.
“We need to have a connection to the dealer, so that we can support the military in every area in Australia,” says Alexander. “We touched base here as well to make sure that this will work well for the years to come. That number of military vehicles gives us a good base for our network to be properly utilised and ensures our service locations are trained on MAN products because it’s an MAN drive line.
“This is supporting the experience of our service network. As a customer, if you have a breakdown, there’s somebody who knows how to fix it. We’re looking forward to actually getting to work on the commercial side and to be as successful on the civil side, as we are on the military side. On the military side, we have very high market share, in that sense.”
The number of MAN drivelines in Australia has risen steeply in recent years as over 3,400 Rheinmetall trucks have been handed over to the military. All of these need regular servicing and will mean more personnel in the Penske workforce have hands on experience with the MAN product.
Those Penske dealers around the country will have seen the slow shift across from a preference for American truck to a European brand and some regional branches and dealerships may not have seen many MAN trucks, but will have seen the military vehicles and started to get their head around the philosophy behind European truck engineering.
The Rheinmetall relationship has seen Penske develop strongly in areas like Toowoomba, parts of regional Victoria, Townsville, Cairns and Darwin, because of the large numbers of military vehicles based in those areas.
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