Sicon Ltd needed greater payload than a ute could deliver, with the ability to put drivers in on a car licence – FUSO Canter 616 Tippers, now with a GVM of 5,995kg, provided the answer.
Ken Winslow – Sicon parks & reserves/water services manager
I’m Ken Winslow, I’m the manager of parks and reserves, and water services for Sicon. I’ve been with Sicon for four years, and before that I had my own transport company.
I’ve been involved in the transport industry for all my working life and I’m a board member of the Road Transport Forum. Sicon Limited is a subsidiary of the Selwyn District Council and was formed in 1994.
Our core business is infrastructure management; we look after the infrastructure for Selwyn District Council, which is all the water reserves, the parks and reserves, and their rubbish and the recovery park.
We hold contracts to the north in Waimakariri and Hurunui, and to the south in Timaru. The business that we carry out is mainly around maintaining the infrastructure.
Our heavy fleet is about 60-odd vehicles, our light fleet’s about 100 vehicles. We have Fusos throughout the company, we use them in our heavy fleet, as well as our light fleet. The little Canters have been a good vehicle because, when we’ve purchased them, we’ve been able to modify the decks easily to fit in our storage boxes
Our staff enjoy driving them because of their size. A lot of our employees are gardeners and lawnmower operators, so they require to drive on a Class 1 license, and so we find that sized vehicle suits very well because you don’t to get into the complications of getting into a Class 2 licence.
They work within our parks and reserves operation, some of them tow mowers and they’ll be carting cut grass. Other ones are gardener’s trucks, so they’ll be carting gardener’s waste – so it’s all fairly light loads.
You need to get into a bigger vehicle than a Ute, and with the tip capabilities, it makes it a lot easier for them to come to a facility like the recovery park to get rid of their green waste – so it gives us more diversification than a ute would.
After sales support is very important; if we can’t get something rectified that goes wrong, it costs us money. We couldn’t get close to it when it comes to fit the specification – like getting under 6T for the capital expenditure, for the CapEx cost, it hit the target.
