A transport operation based on the NSW Central Coast has chosen UD’s flagship Quon model as its main truck of choice as the company is set to expand its operations.
Coastal Transport Services, which has new directors at the helm, i set to expand its operations.from its main depot in Warnervale providing a wide range of logistics and warehousing services right across the state.
Coastal directors Kyle Elphinstone, Graham Ryall and Damien Hopley worked their way up through the company, and took the opportunity to buy the business in 2023.
“We met here at Coastal, we work really well together and have the same kind of aspirations, and when you work together, you’re likeminded, it’s an easy decision to team up and make the acquisition work,” said Kyle Elphinstone.
In the months since they took over, the three directors have worked hard on business development, and are looking to take the business to the next level, recently purchasing land at Warnervale to expand the logistics operation and they’re set to start building in January next year.
In response to the increased demand, the trio say they have been scaling up their fleet, steadily adding UQ Quons to handle tasks ranging from delivering cranes to palletised freight and oversize loads.
“We picked up a couple of large contracts, so we bought a whole selection of UDs, and we want to continue that,” said Elphinstone.
The Coast directors reckon the choice of the UD Quon is no accident.
“I started talking about UDs at the 2023 Brisbane Truck Show and I went and had a look at one at the show and I was really impressed by the product itself,” said Elphinstone,
“Pretty much at that point, I made the decision that we were going to move away from a competitor product and go with UDs, particularly when we reviewed the total solution that was available to us through our local dealer VCV Newcastle with both service contracts and finance.”
The team say they haven’t regretted their decision and have been impressed with the UD Quon’s safety, efficiency and driver comfort.
“The big things for us were comfort, safety, and fuel efficiency – the 3 main areas where UD were miles better than the competition. They have all the good modern tech on them as well.”
The UD Quon benefits from the synergies and advanced shared technologies according to the Volvo Group and with Volvos already in the Coastal fleet, the team said they knew what to expect when it came to quality.
“We’ve got a lot of trust with the Volvo product and it’s a lot of the same components which makes it a very easy decision to be able to go with UD. The UDs are quite simply a bloody good truck,” Elphinstone added.
“We’ve got all 15 of our new UDs on service agreements at the moment as well, with fixed service intervals.”
The directors say they appreciate the knowledge their fleet downtime should be minimised by regular servicing, and value the predictability of fixed pricing agreements through a dealership they trust.
“We have a great relationship with the VCV dealership and have been buying through them for years. Our first purchase with them was in 2015 when we bought our first Volvo FM,” said Elphinstone..
Coastal Transport Services says it has grown to become an integral part of the supply chain for some of Australia’s largest companies and along the way it says its partnership with UD has proven fruitful, and that’s something the team are keen to continue.
“We’ve worked hard over the past 12-24 months on upgrading our fleet and having assets that drivers want to drive and are comfortable driving,’ Elphinstone said,
“The UD Quons are new, fuel efficient, and have all the technology in them, which was a big thing for us,” he added
