Truck Engineering

Our truckshop team consists of 8 mechanics, engineers, fitter welders and panel beaters who maintain the entire fleet of over 40 truck loaders.  As well as maintaining and servicing the fleet, they build 5 new truck loaders every year.  The truck shop is always buzzing with the noises of welding, machining and engine testing!  Painting is done elsewhere on site. 

‘’We started off by refurbishing existing loaders – this progressed to making many improvements on existing machines – in the end we decided to build our own loaders the way we wanted’’.  At the moment our standard chassis is the Mitsubishi Fighter which we fit with a loader and aviation fuel tank’’.  ‘’We have improved the loader brakes, steering and fuel carrying capacity.  We carry around 5,000 litres of jet fuel in tanks on our loaders now which is enough for about 20 hours of flying’’.

‘’The buckets on today’s loaders have a 2 tonne capacity – we’ve come a long way since the days of the Tiger Moths when they could only take about 300kgs at one time”. 

‘’We use 2mm sheet metal called Zincalum to make the loader cabs.  Zincalum is light and easy to build with, and requires less welding’’.  ‘’We do most of our rust proofing on site’’.

‘Our team has steadily improved the hydraulics on the loaders by increasing the volume of oil by 28% - this speeds up the lifting and increases the productivity of the loading process’’.  

‘‘’Our average loader truck travels 10,000 kms per years which, by truck standards, is not much at all.  More important is the number of hours which each truck works on farm.  We are now measuring this via an engine meter so that maintenance can be regularly scheduled based on the number of hours worked rather than distance travelled’’.

‘’Our job in the truck shop is to maintain the truck fleet to avoid aircraft downtime.  Aircraft downtime caused by mechanical failure of ground equipment can be costly in terms of customer service and aircraft productivity.  Our team’s job is to keep such downtime to a minimum’’.


Trucks for sale

For all your Aerial Spreading needs phone
0800 SUPERAIR  (0800 787372)