The Penske Leasing arrangement has been one that Lactalis has found easy to manage after trialling several different approaches to fleshing out their fleet of trucks.
It’s only a recent change in their Victorian factories, having been working with Penske Leasing for the past two and a half years. While they use leasing in Victoria and third-party logistics elsewhere in Australia, they had looked to different approaches before ultimately settling on working with Penske Leasing.
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“We’ve gone through various iterations and brands in my time here,” fleet manager Daniel Cooksley says.
“Lactalis had previously been running Volvos, and then we had bought our own MAN truck, and now we’ve moved over to the lease model. With those leased trucks comes scheduled servicing, breakdown support and afterhours support.
“It’s all very important to an operation where we’re running pretty much 24/7. The guys on the MAN side and the Penske side, nothing’s ever too hard for them. They’re always contactable in the rare case that we do have a breakdown or an issue.
“But in the case that we do, the wheels are put in motion to rectify the situation and get us back on the road.”
Lactalis recently took delivery of five brand new Euro 6 compliant MAN TG3 models, a truck which Penske Leasing has recently seen a significant uptake of.
As the need to meet approaching emissions goals continues to get closer in Australia, having access to the most up-to-date low emissions vehicles is becoming more important than ever.
The new models give Lactalis the chance to lower their emissions on top of leasing reliable trucks that are up to the job.
“The Corporate Social Responsibility piece within Lactalis is huge globally,” Daniel says.
“We need to hit both local targets and targets set by the company and corporate globally. The Euro 6 efficiency of the trucks has really helped us drive down our fuel usage.
“It’s not just about meeting targets, it also helps in cost of operation. You burn less, you spend less. We find that we’ve been able to do more with less. We can burn less fuel and emit less carbon dragging a 70-ton B-double across town than we ever have before.”
Taking on any new truck comes with the process of number crunching and comparing, while also making sure they right for the task.
Cost and efficiency always come out as the biggest factors to consider, but going through Penske Leasing, Daniel says that the little things have made them keep to the leasing model with their MANs.
“We do predominantly highway running, and we’ve compared all the models out there, any brand you can think of,” he says.
“Looking at the comparative numbers, the MANs, in terms of fuel economy, reliability, service network, availability of parts and servicing have come out on top. As a company and operation, we’ve been brand agnostic in the past, and we’ve found that this is the best deal there is.
“Being in a post-COVID world, it was hard to get back stock of trucks coming into the country. While that’s improved, using a leasing model gives us a bit more flexibility.
“We do have peaks throughout the year and demands in different areas of the business, so we can go up and down under a lease as required. It gives us that aftersales support too. It’s all inclusive.
“It can be difficult to capture capital for a fleet of vehicles. By spreading the cost for a lease agreement, it makes it more appealing to a larger organisation.”
