Sean Nero

Ansa Mo­tors' dom­i­nance in the lo­cal com­mer­cial ve­hi­cle sec­tor got an­oth­er boost re­cent­ly with the in­tro­duc­tion of the Freight­lin­er brand.So said Rishi Bas­deo, gen­er­al man­ag­er at Di­a­mond Mo­tors, when deal­er­ship un­veiled its newest line of au­to­mo­biles at its Rich­mond Street head­quar­ters in col­lab­o­ra­tion with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ner Daim­ler Lati­na.

Pow­ered by com­pressed nat­ur­al gas (CNG), the units were brought in­to mar­ket as part of on­go­ing ef­forts to move the trans­port sec­tor away from diesel and gaso­line based fu­els to clean­er, cost-ef­fec­tive al­ter­na­tive.

"In the lo­cal com­mer­cial sec­tor, in our heavy com­mer­cial sec­tor for trucks, we have over 55 per cent mar­ket share, pri­mar­i­ly with our Fu­so brand.

"The Freight­lin­er brand comes from the same fam­i­ly, the Daim­ler fam­i­ly, so we have added a brand that con­sol­i­dates our po­si­tion and con­sol­i­dates our port­fo­lio," Bas­deo said.

"We sin­cere­ly be­lieve that this will help us in­crease our mar­ket share. We be­lieve that with prop­er po­si­tion­ing and tar­get­ing the right seg­ments, we could pos­si­bly add an­oth­er six to sev­en per­cent­age points in our mar­ket share with the adop­tion of this brand." He said the truck is a pi­o­neer in the in­dus­try.

"We have CNG Freight­lin­er OEM (orig­i­nal equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­er) trucks in trac­tor heads or rigids that we could put any ap­pli­ca­tion, from cranes to flatbeds trays, you name it. So it's not just ap­plic­a­ble to hard­ware own­ers.

"We have a range of clien­tele that it would be suit­able for. So, we could start with the heavy in­dus­tri­al sec­tor and work it all the way down to in­di­vid­ual busi­ness­men who want to in­vest in a high qual­i­ty unit with the gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies to sup­port it," he said

Bas­deo said there were no plans to phase out diesel-fu­elled trucks in stocks and the CNG ve­hi­cles are meant to com­ple­ment the ex­ist­ing fleet. With the cur­rent gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tives, he said, there is a place for the new mod­el ve­hi­cles which op­er­ate on a clean­er fu­el.

He not­ed the Gov­ern­ment's ex­pres­sion of in­ter­est to fleet own­ers to ex­plore how the state could as­sist them in up­grad­ing to ei­ther OEM CNG trucks or retro-fit­ting ve­hi­cles to fa­cil­i­tate CNG use.

"With this op­tion, lo­cal truck own­ers no longer have to con­sid­er retro-fit­ting their ve­hi­cles. They can come straight to us, get these OEM units and they will get the full ben­e­fits of the war­ranties and the ser­vice and the af­ter sales sup­port that comes with it.

"Ul­ti­mate­ly, there will be a thresh­old up­on which cus­tomers will in­crease their rate of switch­ing (to CNG) based on the price of fu­el.

"Cer­tain­ly, as the price of diesel or the price of gaso­line goes up, the rate of switch­ing will in­crease. Where that point is, I can't say at this time, but it will be de­ter­mined by the pub­lic," Bas­deo said.

Jamie Co­hen, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at Mer­cedes Benz/Freight­lin­er Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean, said it was not on­ly im­por­tant for Ansa Mo­tors to in­tro­duce the Freight­lin­er brand to T&T, but for his com­pa­ny, too, as T&T is a very im­por­tant mar­ket.

"It's one of the largest is­lands in the Caribbean. It's al­so a mar­ket for trucks and es­pe­cial­ly now with the CNG ini­tia­tive it's a pi­o­neer­ing ini­tia­tive that we are very glad to sup­port. We have been do­ing it in the North Amer­i­can mar­ket and go­ing in­to Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, it's most im­por­tant for all of us, both from the tech­nol­o­gy and al­so from im­ple­ment­ing some­thing that's eco­log­i­cal­ly friend­ly, re­duc­ing car­bon foot­print and re­al­ly help­ing the world. So it's re­al­ly im­por­tant," he said.

While Co­hen could of­fer no im­me­di­ate num­bers on Freight­lin­er's mar­ket share re­gion­al­ly, he said the lead­er­ship role the com­pa­ny had in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope had trans­lat­ed pos­i­tive­ly in­to the is­lands.

"Cer­tain­ly, there is an in­flu­ence of the Amer­i­can mar­ket in­to the is­lands and you will see that in how Freight­lin­er be­haves as a brand. We are lead­ers in North Amer­i­ca. We ex­pect the same here. In Eu­rope, we are al­so lead­ers with Mer­cedes Benz trucks and there are al­so a lot of Eu­ro­pean foot­prints in the is­lands, as well, so we ex­pect the same de­vel­op­ment," he said.

Ser­vice and sup­port will be a cru­cial fea­ture in the com­pa­ny's re­la­tion­ship with ANSA Mo­tors, Co­hen said. He un­der­scored that train­ing of staff at the lo­cal deal­er­ship to sat­is­fy the needs of cus­tomers to un­der­pin the re­la­tion­ship the com­pa­nies en­joyed.

"Not on­ly ser­vice, but dri­ving it. We have a very strong pro­gramme to pro­vide train­ing at all lev­els. We train dri­vers. We train ser­vice ad­vis­ers.

"We train sales peo­ple, so they can al­so ex­plain how the truck works. We don't on­ly do that once. We have web-based train­ing. We have train-the-train­er train­ing.

"There are peo­ple from my de­part­ment that pro­vide boots-on-the-ground ad­vice. That's the most im­por­tant part. I can bring the lat­est trucks.

"If you don't know how to dri­ve it and how to ser­vice (it) it hurts every­body. So we do a lot of that. We in­vest a lot of mon­ey do­ing that," he said.