National transport company, Auswide Transport Solutions, is now manufacturing semi-trailers.
The fleet is building road train-rated trailers and dollies in-house at its Sunshine facility in Victoria under the brand of ATS Trailers.
The first 20 Performance-Based Standards (PBS) B-doubles are already in service for the transporter’s premium customers and an additional six units are in production.
In response to significant cost increases and lengthy lead times from its preferred suppliers, Auswide launched its own trailer building operations early last year.
The fleet had already made substantial investments in recent years exceeding $30 million in Victorian manufacturing alongside an additional $10 million in Queensland to source equipment from leading OEMs such as Kenworth, Volvo and Vawdrey.
However, the rising costs of reinvestment in these renowned brands and increasing downward pressure on rates created a clear challenge for scaling up its operations.
Vertical integration suddenly became the solution to maintaining the business’ trajectory according to Auswide Transport Solutions CEO, Tom Pausic.
“This marked the beginning of a new chapter for our business,” he told Trailer.
“We sought out skilled engineers to join our team and commissioned CAD drawings which were thoroughly reviewed by external parties before we began the design and construction of our specialised road train combinations.”
Auswide had already designed and built more than 50 dolly converters to support its growing road train operations.
The fleet’s early success in this area provided a strong foundation for the next step – establishing a facility in the west of Melbourne to build these custom units.
“The process was not without its challenges,” Pausic said.
“Securing permits, setting up paint booths, sourcing the necessary tooling and hiring qualified staff were all new aspects of the business.
“Through sheer grit, determination, long nights and countless meetings, we successfully established the manufacturing facility and began producing our road train combinations at an impressive rate.”
It initially took the ATS Trailers team 43 days to build one combination. That timeline has since reduced to just 14 days per unit.
“While we acknowledge that we will never match the sheer scale of the major players in the industry, we have no intention of directly competing with them,” Pausic told Trailer.
“Our business unit was specifically designed to meet the unique needs of our operations, and we are focused on fulfilling our own requirements.”
The trailers themselves are 4.6m drop deck mezzanine units with mezzanine floors fitted throughout and double mezzanine floors in the drop sections.
Being custom-built to meet Auswide’s specific requirements, the trailers’ standard specs include Fuwa K Hitch axles, suspension and fifth wheels, JOST kingpins, ESG Group wiring harnesses and LED lighting systems, WABCO braking systems and curtains supplied by Anytime Curtains and painted by Fleetmark.
Roof rails, gates and nose cones are all designed and manufactured by Auswide in-house.
Auswide Transport Solutions General Manager, Gabby Singh, said the interchangeability of the trailers is a major advantage.
“We can pick any A trailer and hook it up with a separate B trailer, and we can put these combinations into A-doubles, B-doubles or AB-triples as we see fit,” he told Trailer.
“For the brand itself, we get to control much more of the supply chain in what we do. This includes quality control, optimised design for operations, reduced reliance on external trailer manufacturers and more reliability.”
It also provides the fleet flexibility by removing long lead times around bulk orders.
Singh said the business sources up to 20 sets at once.
“Being the scale our business is, we don’t order a couple of sets here and there,” he said.
“If we put an order in for 10 B-doubles we’ll be waiting at least a year. But here, the turnaround for one set is about 14 days. It works well for us.”
Singh said it also strengthens the operational and efficiency gains of the company in high and low periods.
“We are a few days away from signing a big contract where we would need more trailers and trucks on the road,” he told Trailer.
“When we see the work coming out, we can scale our manufacturing up or down depending on our needs.”
By bringing the manufacturing of trailers in-house, Auswide has also streamlined operational efficiencies during a growth phase.
“That’s where we’re finding out our efficiency – standardising the process and the parts supplier and knowing that we can get these parts on the road if there are issues,” Pausic said.
“We’ve made this so that it’s easy, flexible and cost-effective for us. We’re still getting the same quality product, but we’re just doing things in-house and we’re doing it in scale.”
Auswide, as a result, is slowly phasing out older units which aren’t PBS-rated or interchangeable as it introduces its own new ATS Trailers combinations to the fleet.
“Standardising the fleet is the biggest thing,” Pausic said.
“Anything sub-2015 is being filtered out of the business.”
For the moment, the immediate goal of ATS Trailers is to build 100 B-double combinations before it considers the potential of bringing the product to market.
“There is definitely an appetite to build more purely in a commercial stance,” Pausic said.
“We started Auswide 15 years ago with one truck and now it has close to 700 with depots across the nation, so nothing’s impossible.
“I’m not saying that’s what we’re going to do, but we dare to dream.”
