King of the Hills

GASPAC Motors has operated as part of Tasmania’s transport industry in one form or another for the last 30 years.

In the mid 1990s, it began as Arnold’s — the logistics brainchild of Graham Arnold and his wife, which had completed operations and sold its assets within the decade.

That is, until Graham’s son, Andrew, rebirthed and repurposed the business as a fuel carter in the mid-2000s.

Amid the development of this new business, Andrew’s son, Nathaniel, left to pursue a different calling.

“Years ago, I was working with my dad when we were carting fuel, but then I decided to move away, and went to university in New South Wales,” Nathaniel says.

“I studied to be a teacher and worked as one for a while but continued to drive trucks on the side. That kind of work never left me — it’s like a ‘diesel-in-your-veins’ thing, I suppose.”

After eight years of being away, last year Nathaniel returned when his father sold the fuel transportation business to seize an opportunity to start a new venture, which has since begun to grow.

That was the chance Nathaniel was looking for to come back and he hasn’t squandered it. The venture in question is the most current iteration of the Arnolds’ family business, known as GASPAC Motors.

The nascent company, based in Tasmania’s northwest region, has worked tirelessly to support the state’s booming dairy industry, which is active for much of the year.

“The dairy season in Tasmania is very reliable,” Nathaniel says, now the company’s Operations Manager.

“From around October to May, it’s extremely busy, which keeps operators who are involved in it occupied the entire time. It’s a reliable season and it’s not going anywhere, which is great news for businesses like ours.”

Within this busy dairy season, GASPAC Motors hauls shipping containers, in two distinct applications.

The first of which is as a sub-contractor for local agriculture company, Cowbiz Stockfeeds.

Under this partnership, GASPAC Motors moves containers full of Cowbiz Stockfeeds’ pelleted grain to farms, where it is pumped into silos to then feed cows and sheep, and support the development of dairy products from those animals.

The second application sees GASPAC Motors collecting shipping containers from the wharf in the town of Burnie and transporting them to the nearby areas of Circular Head and Smithton, where they are further used for dairy-related transport.

“That general area is quite a hotspot for the industry,” Nathaniel says. “Smithton is prime dairy country, and northwest Tasmania is dedicated to the production of dairy products.”

These demands have stretched GASPAC Motors’ capabilities across much of the state and have necessitated growth in the company’s fleet as a result.

“When dad started GASPAC Motors in August of last year, he was one man with a secondhand truck,” Nathaniel explains.

“But the success of the business provided him with the opportunity to expand earlier this year, around the time I joined the company. So, we bought a couple of trucks, growing our fleet to three units.”

These new trucks needed to perform under constant work and the demanding conditions of Tasmania’s hilly landscape.

So, according to Nathaniel, it was a no-brainer to pick a Freightliner Cascadia 126 — one of only two in Australia.

The truck also features colourful detailing of a maned lion on the bonnet, side and back which serves as a reference to a CS Lewis book series.

“The lions on our truck is a representation of the character Aslan from the famous book series, The Chronicles of Narnia,” Nathaniel says.

“It was my dad’s idea, and first came about because he always wanted to name a truck Aslan anyway. The character is known for his strength and leadership, which represents GASPAC Motors and its capabilities.”

The Freightliner Cascadia has been put to work moving containers to and around the wharf of Burnie and its neighbouring areas.

Carting these containers around the tricky terrain of northwest Tasmania is a taxing job for any vehicle, but this is where the Cascadia shines.

Ordered standard from the factory – with the exception of some driving lights added to the front – Nathaniel and his father have been very pleased with the unit’s reliability on these roads.

“Any truck is only good to us while it’s going,” Nathaniel says. “And the Cascadia has no problem with that. It has a payload capacity of 68.5 tonnes, which is perfect for the shipping containers that we are hauling every day. This is complemented by its great fuel economy — 1.8 kilometers per litre at full weight.

“Our loads aren’t aerodynamic, since they are shipping containers, and we don’t travel on a lot of flatlands. The highways in the area are quite hilly, so a lot of the journeys are hard on the throttle, with a lot of long pulls. Considering the load we carry and the terrain we travel on, the Cascadia’s fuel economy is just fantastic.”

But the Freightliner Cascadia is also suited to Tasmania’s elevated terrain in other ways.

Nathaniel has found that the truck’s engine, a Detroit DD16, provides great ‘power under the curve’ to keep the truck powerful and fast in spite of its heavier loads.

“The engine itself sits at 600 horsepower, but provides a good number of revs where a lot of torque is available,” Nathaniel continues.

“When driving, as the engine’s number of revs is falling, the torque output stays really high, which makes the truck very quick. Sometimes I’ll drive the Cascadia and my dad will drive one of our other trucks, and we’ll compare the speeds of the two. We’ve found that if we both drive over the top of the hill, let’s say at 28 kilometres per hour, the Cascadia will close a 400-metre gap when compared to the other truck, due to the power and speed from that engine. And so it’s great for covering the environment that we’re always driving on.”

Additionally, the Cascadia’s engine brake has proven very effective in GASPAC operations, helping to hold the truck back when it travels over steep uphill roads and down hills.

Meanwhile, the truck’s automated transmission shifts gears quickly, too, which is a helpful feature for when the Cascadia is manoeuvring around the wharf of Burnie in short bursts of driving.

These qualities of the Freightliner Cascadia have made it the perfect truck to aid GASPAC Motors’ growth in Tasmania. And, between the father-son duo’s satisfaction with the truck, and the ever-present demand in the state’s dairy industry, further fleet expansion is likely in the near future.

“What we needed out of the Cascadia was for it to be light, and to drive properly, and it’s done both of those things very well,” Nathaniel says.

“We’re in a great place with our business at the moment, but we’re definitely open to more growth down the line, however that may look for us.” He adds, “But for now, there’s still a job to do, and a Cascadia to do it.”