Emerald Carrying Company: Polished to perfection

The words are prominent on the door of the Kenworth – PRIDE, CARE, RESPECT, EXCELLENCE – and in a nutshell they reflect what Emerald Carrying Co (ECC) is all about.

The culture at ECC is obvious: Pride in everything IS everything!

The stunningly immaculate Queensland fleet will this year haul 3 billion litres of fuel to mines, fuel depots and service stations.

ECC’s operational and maintenance standards are of the highest order, with the company’s fleet of 145 prime movers and 350 trailers running on high utilisation schedules.

In fact, high utilisation is a trademark of the fleet with some of ECC’s fuel-haul B-doubles clocking 450,000 km a year on triple-shift work.

Kenworths with Cummins power dominate at ECC. What is obvious is the strong relationship that has been forged over the years between ECC and its suppliers: Loyalty received is deserving of loyalty in return! 

The relationship with Cummins, dating back to the 1980s, is evident with ECC recently putting into service a set of B-double tankers promoting the Cummins brand – in particular the Euro 6 X15 with the accompanying message ‘We’re ready when you are’. 

“Cummins is the best engine brand on the market in terms of reliability and aftersales support,” says ECC fleet manager Matt Haylock without hesitation.

“We run our trucks into some extremely remote areas across Queensland, the Northern Territory and New South Wales so reliability is crucial.”

When a Kenworth has done around 1.2 million km, ECC rebuilds the engine or replaces it with a brand new one depending on how quickly the kilometres have been accumulated. The X15 dominates in a fleet which has recently seen the first Euro 6 X15 engines enter service. 

The latest innovation at ECC is the ‘Super Triple’, a PBS-certified combination that operates on the 900 km trip between Townsville and Mt Isa, hauling 130,000 litres of fuel – a gain of up to 22,000 litres compared with the capacity of a standard roadtrain triple.

The Super Triple, with 600 Cummins X15 horses in harness, features a tri-drive Kenworth T909 pulling Tieman quad-axle trailers and tri-axle dollies, with a loaded weight of 156 tonnes. Early fuel figures show the Super Triple running at 1.18 km/litre.

If high utilisation is a trademark of the fleet, just as important is the presentation of the trucks – they are generally washed after each shift – and the way they are maintained. 

I guessed that the impeccable Kenworth K200 in the photo accompanying this article was probably 12 months old with a few hundred thousand kilometres on the clock. It is, in fact, a 2016 model with over one million kilometres under the X15 rocker cover.

ECC runs a stringent maintenance regime which underpins the company’s fleet reliability and safety commitments.

We have very few breakdowns – perhaps one a month, if that,”

confirms ECC maintenance manager Chris Chalmers. “We’re proud of that considering the size of the fleet.” 

Today, ECC operates out of Darwin, Cairns, Emerald, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Gladstone and Brisbane, while its Monaro fleet – ECC acquired Monaro Fuel Haulage in 2016 – has depots in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.
At the time of the acquisition, the Monaro fleet totalled six trucks; today close to 40 trucks operate in the Monaro blue livery.

“Our B-double prime movers are brought in for checks every 12,500 km which is generally a week to 10 days while our engine oil change intervals are 50,000 km for the B-doubles and 25,000 km for the roadtrains,” Chalmers points out. “We look at fuel burn every service to check engine load factors and that our servicing intervals are where they should be.

“Accurate forecasting is the key to our maintenance system, and each week we get an automated report detailing which trucks are due in for servicing. We have five workshops and 30 mechanics including nine apprentices,” he adds.

Family-owned ECC has certainly come a long way since Bill Haylock’s modest start in the mid-1960s in the central Queensland town of Emerald, where he had a 4-ton Austin carting off the rail. Team effort, employee loyalty and business integrity are obviously guiding principles behind an operation that today uses premium equipment to provide a premium service.