A third generation family concern in Sydney, T&S Roadworks certainly lives up to its name even if the operational footprint is perhaps more divergent than what the brand confers.
Not only does it specialise in road maintenance, but it also provides emergency response for accidents and incident cleanups in the aftermath of natural disasters.
Concrete and asphalt resurfacing and repairs within the Sydney metropolitan region is the bread and butter of the business.
While it manages ongoing works with many Tier 1 partners, their biggest account is with Transport for NSW, who awards contracts for three zones across its extensive 12,368.2km² Sydney road network.
Here T&S Roadworks is now a major presence with projects underway on various major arterial roads where they are completing road repairs in addition to conducting routine maintenance of concrete national pavements on the likes of Picton Road, M1 Freeway and Sydney Harbour Bridge. E
ndowed with a growing arsenal of sophisticated tools including a weighty Wirtgen cold milling machine, and a PBS trailer tasked with carrying it, T&S Roadworks uses and owns an array of different heavy equipment.
Excavators are one of the predominant assets in the business. They also own and regularly deploy backhoes and skid steer loaders. The road milling machine features a rotating drum with a cutting width of 1.5 metres.
“It basically rips up the old asphalt or any damaged asphalt pavement to allow new asphalt to be laid in that area,” explains Operations Manager Peter Argyropoulos.
“Obviously when you’re up to those weights, especially with the milling machine just on its own weighing nearly 30 tonnes you need some grunt behind it.”
To haul this imposing 22-metre unit T&S Roadworks have purchased a brand-new MAN TGX 26.640.
It’s the fifth MAN the business has purchased since it formed a relationship with the OEM back in 1994 and the fourth MAN currently active in the truck fleet, which is now up to eight units in total.
The trailer that it is coupled to is an FWR quad axle twin-rear-steer low loader float. While its main purpose is to haul the milling machine around it also transports excavators and has the capability to conduct wide load transportation with a deck opening width of up to 3.5 metres.
The milling machine was purchased specifically for the company’s asphalt division.
“The main purpose of the machine was to expand our fleet and our expertise and also to have the peace of mind that we’ve got our own equipment to do the tasks that we need to do and now clients have a higher regard of that because we’re pretty much a one stop shop within our industry,” says Peter.
“We needed equipment so that we could provide emergency responses at all hours of the day or night, holidays, Christmas breaks, whenever an incident happens, we’ve got to be there.”
The majority of shifts unsurprisingly take place at night, but this is variable. Recent heavy rains have dictated the movements of various crews during the day as they perform urgent cleanups.
Having an emergency response division has helped protect the business from lapses in work. In fact, the opposite, according to Peter, is true.
“Because there’s been a lot of rainfall, the road network is slowly becoming worse,” he says.
“We’re all hands-on deck especially with flood recovery as well. We’ve been there on many occasions to help reopen bridges and causeways and to allow ferries to operate.”
A few years ago, a landslide on Putty Road in which a section above the road gave way required attendance from T&S Roadworks who were tasked with removing the overflow of soil so that specialty contractors could stabilise the mountain and the adjacent rockface and the road could be opened to traffic at the quickest possible convenience.
“Our main task is to get the job done safely and to secondly perform our job to a quality standard and thirdly to be efficient in doing so,” says Peter.
“They’re our three values in business — safety, quality and efficiency. In our line of work, we need to be efficient and open the traffic back to the general public as quickly as possible. You can imagine if major arterials are blocked for roadworks during the day, it would be an absolute nightmare.”
The company recently moved its headquarters over to Moorebank where a bigger facility is now located. They were previously based in Bankstown.
“Given our growth it wasn’t feasible to stay there as a property,” says Peter. “We just didn’t have the room.”
Peter’s grandfather, his namesake, first migrated to Sydney from Greece in 1970.
His father Tony and grandfather had a business together for a number of years before the retirement of the latter compelled the son to go out on his own. He started off with one backhoe, one excavator and a truck.
Peter and his brothers Michael and Stan are now the company directors. The business currently employs 25 staff.
Back in the 1990s they ran a transfer station. The road maintenance commenced in the early 2000s before it eventually became the main focus.
Around this time, they invested in several new second generation MAN TGS 26.480s. The latest TGX 26.640, the most powerful MAN available, has no problems lugging around the milling machine.
“I believe it’s the best product on the market,” says Peter. “I’ve driven other European trucks and personally for me I like the way MAN trucks are designed, how they’re built, their build quality and their maintenance.”
Peter need not rely on second hand accounts from drivers and dealers. He’s very familiar with the unit having driven the truck on several occasions including interstate.
“I was gobsmacked by the amount of torque and the gearing of it,” he says.
“They’ve developed a good product as a whole. As a drivetrain assembly it just works wonders. Especially, as I said, when you’ve got heavy weights behind you and you’re up and down hills and in and around city areas.”
The three operator modes available via the flick of a switch are major advantages in this particular line of work.
“You’ve got Manoeuvre for tight operations and Efficiency for day in and day out driving, and you’ve got Performance,” explains Peter.
“When you’re in Performance and you’ve got a bit of weight behind you, you can definitely feel the difference. To give you an understanding, our truck and trailer is 22 metres long. It’s under a special permit class as a quad axle float. The truck gives the driver the ease and confidence that he can get into those tight places. The vision out of the truck increases the safety as well.”
Having been to Germany a few times including the recent IAA Transportation 2024 fair in Hannover, Peter has seen how the MAN trucks are built in Munich and the technology that goes into the product.
He saw what he describes as the “meticulous” way each truck is built.
“The robots within the factory are very minimal,” he says. “It’s still built by hand, by quality tradesman. Each truck is off the line. It’s checked and it’s double checked. It’s just phenomenal,” he says.
“The truck as a whole for the pricing of it, with the engine, the various functions and safety features, I don’t think you can compare it. That was the main reason we purchased the truck. The service intervals are great for us, the cost of ownership is minimal within our industry. That helped us make our choice.”
So too did the brand’s reliability. It’s vital, when taking emergency callouts at any time day or night, to have a prime mover that is always ready to go, even on short notice.
“For a business of our nature it means a lot to an operator when you can just start a truck up in the morning and you haven’t got any headaches,” adds Peter.
“When that happens day in and day out it’s crucial. The last thing we need, with our work, is a truck that doesn’t start or is not reliable.”
For the previous MAN TGS trucks they serviced them once a year given the vehicles rarely amassed significant kilometres working within the Sydney metro area.
The new truck, however, is a noticeable step up compared to the previous truck platform. The safety features have come a long way according to Peter.
“That provides us driver assurance and it gives us, as company owners or as principals, more confidence that we have equipment on hand that will prevent an incident from happening,” he says.
“For us it’s more about having a truck that is stress free.”
In the new MAN range, there’s a camera switch on the dash which does away with having to buy an auxiliary screen and mount it in the cabin.
As the new media infotainment system allows two cameras to run through the main 12-inch screen itself, T&S Roadworks has wired up a truck and trailer camera so that the driver can flick between the two views depending on whether he’s hooking up to the trailer from the prime mover or if he’s reversing both units, he can defer to the trailer vision.
“Being able to do stuff like that is cost effective,” says Peter.
“You buy the harness, and you wire it up, and you don’t require screens all over the place. Nine times out of ten if you add another screen, it will affect your vision coming out of your front windscreen one way or another.”
The new MAN TGX 26.640 also features detailed airbrush art with the words the “Lion King” above the image of a noble looking male lion on the side and rear of the cab.
Peter drove the truck up to Brisbane recently to have a few spots in the paintwork touched up.
On the return leg he ran out of hours giving him the chance to sleep in the truck for the night. When he turned in something fell between the driver’s seat and the bunk.
“So, I went to grab it and I discovered there was a European socket there,” he recalls.
“It actually has an inverter within the truck. I didn’t specify it. I said to myself this is a $2000 inverter that is within the price of the truck that allows you to run a laptop or a printer. It’s little things like that for me that makes a difference.”
He adds, “MAN thinks outside the square.”
