Low profile, high standards

Despite a highly visible and impeccably presented fleet, McNaughts Transport of Finley, NSW, is the quintessential quiet achiever.

Operating from a head office in a small town with a population of just 2000, the McNaughts team has obviously worked hard building relationships with customers and keeping them for the long term.

Importantly, the company has also grown on the back of a culture of looking after the people that do the work.

Obviously a proud family-owned business, the McNaughts are totally content to walk-the-walk rather than talk-the-talk.

Achieving cost-effect life from equipment and maintaining this equipment to the highest standards in the high gross weight applications is another strong focus.

The McNaughts fleet today comprises around 50 prime movers - Cummins-powered Kenworths are a staple of the operation - and they couple to range of trailing equipment to form A-doubles, AB-triples, B-triples and B-doubles, with gross weights spanning 68 to 114 tonnes.

With bases in Finley, Dubbo and Berrigan in NSW, McNaughts applies its haulage expertise to general freight, a wide range of bulk products including grain and fertiliser, and has high-capacity storage facilities for these products.

The company also has a long-established relationship with one of Australia's largest rice product producers.

Knowing costs

Daniel McNaught leads the family business today as CEO.

He points out their focus is on business resilience, running the business on their terms and knowing the costs. If there's a problem it's self-inflicted.

Nothing they do is special, it's all about optimisation, looking for better solutions and working the trends better.

As a family company McNaughts works hard at attracting and retaining good people and is proud of its team of employees.

Operations manager Darryn 'Scoota' McDonald had been with the company close to 30 years and has seen it evolve from modest beginnings.

He remembers when he started that McNaughts had four trucks - two T600 Anteater Kenworths with 435 hp Cummins N14 Red Head engines, one Western Star with a 525 hp Red Head, and one cabover Kenworth with a Big Cam 400 Cummins.

Today, the Cummins-powered Kenworths are in the hands of a man well-known and respected for his approach to maintenance - Brian Layton.

Brian worked for Ian Cootes for 24 years as workshop manager when the IR Cootes operation had a reputation as one of the country's most immaculate fleets.

'Exceptional support'

He rates Cummins' support as "exceptional", citing Cummins' Newcastle, Wodonga, Laverton and Brisbane branches for special mention.

Discussing engine life, he considers operators are probably "expecting too much" in view of today's much higher demands on equipment.

"Today's trucks are running at higher gross weights while utilisation is higher to counter tighter margins, so engine load factors are consistently higher," he says, pointing to the range of multi-trailer combinations McNaughts operates with gross weights up to 114 tonnes.

The company has settled on a standard X15 rating for its Kenworths - 600 hp with peak torque of 1850 lb ft - to achieve the best balance of performance and driveline durability.

"Engine oil changes are every 40,000 km and we also do oil sampling at this point," Brian points out. "This gives us a very good picture of trends and when engine changeout is likely to occur."

Recruiting members

Drivetrain rebuilds are carried out at the McNaught workshop in Finley where four Filipino mechanics are based. "They're doing a brilliant job," says Brian, pointing out their recruitment has provided skill sets that are often hard to come by in a small town like Finley.

Brian notes that the Kenworths are far from basic-spec units. In recent times, the favoured models are the T909 and K200/220 and all have a fridge, microwave oven, TV, Icepak sleeper cab air conditioning and other options to ensure the drivers are well looked after.

"We're looking at two lives with our T909s, refurbishing them at around 1.2 million kilometres and fitting Cummins X15e5 crate engines," he points out, adding the trucks are still in excellent conditions after 2.4 million kilometres.