A hefty order of new trucks and a change of leadership has equipped Coastal Transport Services with the means and knowhow to expand its operational footprint.
From their main depot in Warnervale on the New South Wales central Coast, Coastal Transport Services provide a wide range of logistics and warehousing services right across the state.
Directors Kyle Elphinstone, Graham Ryall and Damien Hopley worked their way up through the company, and seized the opportunity to buy the business in 2023.
“We met here at Coastal, we work really well together and have the same kind of aspirations. When you work together, you’re likeminded, it’s an easy decision to team up and make the acquisition work,” said Elphinstone.
In the months since they took over, the team have worked hard on business development, and are looking to take the business to the next level.
They recently purchased land at Warnervale to expand their logistics operation and are set to start building in January 2025.
In response to the increased demand, the trio have been scaling up their fleet, steadily adding UQ Quons to handle tasks ranging from delivering cranes to palletised freight and oversize loads.
“We picked up a couple of large contracts, so we bought a whole selection of UDs, and we want to continue that,” said Elphinstone.
“I started talking about UDs at the 2023 Brisbane Truck Show and I went and had a look at one at the show and I was really impressed by the product itself.
“Pretty much at that point, I made the decision that we were going to move away from a competitor product and go with UDs, particularly when we reviewed the total solution that was available to us through our local dealer VCV Newcastle with both service contracts and finance.”
The team haven’t regretted their decision and have been impressed with the UD Quon’s safety, efficiency and driver comfort.
“The big things for us were comfort, safety, and fuel efficiency – the three main areas where UD were miles better than the competition. They have all the good modern tech on them as well,” added Elphinstone.
Within the Volvo Group stable, the UD Quon benefits from the synergies and advanced shared technologies. With Volvos already in the fleet, the team, according to Elphinstone, knew what to expect when it came to quality.
“We’ve got a lot of trust with the Volvo product and it’s a lot of the same components which makes it a very easy decision to be able to go with UD. The UDs are quite simply a bloody good truck,” he said.
Rapid fleet expansions are no small undertaking financially, but Coastal sat down with the UD Trucks Financial Services team and came up with a financing arrangement that suited them to a tee.
“It’s been so good with UD Trucks Financial Services, the team makes our lives a lot easier,” said Ryall, whose own background in accounting gives him an edge when it comes to finance.
“We love using them and they offer competitive rates compared to the banks. You know it’s just the ease of it, it’s so much easier than having to go to the bank, and when they’re offering interest rates that are as good as if not better than the bank, you’d be silly not to use them and their expertise,” he said.
“We’ve got all 15 of our new UDs on service agreements at the moment as well, with fixed service intervals.”
Kyle and Graham appreciate the certainty of knowing their fleet downtime will be minimised by regular servicing, and value the predictability of fixed pricing agreements through a dealership they trust.
“We have a great relationship with the VCV dealership and have been buying through them for years. Our first purchase with them was in 2015 when we bought our first Volvo FM,” said Elphinstone.
Coastal Transport Services have grown to become an integral part of the supply chain for some of Australia’s largest companies.
Along the way the partnership with UD Trucks has proven fruitful, and that’s something the team are keen to continue.
“We’ve worked hard over the past 12-24 months on upgrading our fleet and having assets that drivers want to drive and are comfortable driving,” said Elphinstone.
“The UD Quons are new, fuel efficient, and have all the technology in them, which was a big thing for us.”
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