“We have a versatile product range for the industrial business.”

Naoki Kobayashi, Key Account & Regional Director of UD Trucks talks about what the All New Quon, New Quester and Croner bring to industrial segment assignments.

What are the key trends, opportunities and challenges for the industry moving forward? What is your outlook of the industry?
In emerging markets, many companies have started to consider safety, environment and societal issues. At the same time, businesses are experiencing a lack of drivers who are becoming overworked to meet the demands for freight transport. Traditionally, when there is a lack of drivers, businesses maximize their freight by loading more onto their trucks which becomes a safety concern. Increasingly many countries have enforced stricter weight regulations and driver compliance. These are challenges that we need to provide solutions for; the lack of drivers as well as secure higher uptime and payload to keep logistics moving, which is the lifeline of society.

How do our products meet the needs ofthe customers in markets today?
All New Quon, New Quester with ESCOT and Croner with Allison are the best partners for the industrial business. They are comfortable to drive in and thus ease driver’s fatigue.
Even if the driver is not experienced, they will be able to drive our trucks easily which will then secure more drivers in your fleet. As a result, this increases uptime. On top of providing better driving comfort, the introduction of automatic transmission will help to improve and standardize fuel efficiency across your fleet. In addition with New Quester, the overall vehicle weight has decreased by almost a tonne, which will help customers to maximize the payload as weight regulations have become stricter.

What makes our products optimal for our customers? What are some of the key features of these trucks (eg: Telematics, payload capacity) that make them suitable for our customers?
Service offerings such as the fuel coaching system and telematics will help to decrease operational cost by improving fuel-efficient driving. With these services, we can analyze the driving behaviour of each driver and together with the customer, we can improve the driving skills with optimal fuel-efficiency. In addition, through our vehicle handover process and driver training when delivering the trucks, customers will be informed of how to improve fuel efficiency within their fleet.

What do you see being most important to provide for customers (eg: aftersales support, UD Telematics)?
Highly skilled mechanics and technicians that provide quality services are important. In this globalized world, customers run their businesses in many countries and operate across borders. Within each country, these customers prioritize on time delivery in order to meet their global demand. UD trucks has operations in more than 60 countries with highly skilled mechanics who have been trained to provide high quality services to ensure that our customer’s business runs smoothly and maintains a high uptime.”