– By Caroline Falls –
Fleet Auto News’ Caroline Falls talked to some of the exhibitors at the 2019 IPWEA Fleet Conference in Brisbane during March and shot the following pics for this photo story.
Jason Harding area fleet manager at Volvo Group Australia gave a short talk on the group’s activities ahead of a networking session on the second day and a tour of the Volvo factory in Wacol on the last day of the event. Harding said Volvo’s manufacturing facility is the largest automotive factory in Australia. “We don’t only have the high technology Volvo trucks and the legendary Mack trucks, we also have the reliable UD trucks,” Harding said. He said Volvo delivered its first EV truck this year. “It’s an exciting time to be in the vehicle industry,” he said, adding, “Electric mobility will enable night-time delivery because of the low noise.”
Pickles account managers Robert Webster and Stevie Kruck. Webster said Pickles, which remarkets and auctions assets, is the source for used car sales data for Datium Insights, a tool vehicle vendors use to predict residual values. “It’s now starting to get a bit of traction, with more and more people interested in using our fleet management systems,” said Webster. He said most of the major leasing companies, and many local and state governments used Pickles online auctions to sell used vehicles and equipment. Pickles has some 23 branches across Australia, and sells more than 10,000 vehicles and plant a year.
Matt Miller, demonstrator of the Bucher Municipal street cleaning and waste collection vehicles, including the UrBin Series 11 Rear Loader. The rear loader UrBin bodies are made from a single sheet rolled wear resistant and high grade steel making them hard wearing and light. Bucher Municipal is a unit of Zurich, Switzerland-based Bucher Industries. It has two manufacturing facilities in Australia, at Clayton and Scoresby in Victoria. It has retail branches in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth and promises 24/7 field service support nationwide.
FleetSafe business development executive Steve Smith featured the vehicle collision avoidance solution called Mobileye. FleetSafe is the authorized distributor for the Intel Company’s aftermarket Mobileye advanced driver assistance system, which is a forward-facing sensor scanning the road and alerting the driver ahead of potential collisions. FleetSafe will retrofit the Mobileye technology in any vehicle, not just new vehicles. It can also be integrated into most telematics systems. Indeed, Mobileye is a world leader in sensor technology, with its systems integrated into new cars from BMW, Audi, VW, Volvo, Nissan, GM, Ford and Honda.
