With over 75 years’ experience in the industry, Freighter Group is taking the next step in looking after its customers, introducing its spare parts solutions and upgraded facility.
Freighter Group is synonymous with road transport in Australia, delivering high quality and locally manufactured heavy duty road transport trailer solutions for its customers.
With origins dating back to 1946, Freighter Group has called the regional town of Ballarat, Victoria, home since the early 1970s.
Over the course of its journey, it has continued to establish and evolve its distribution network around Australia.
With locations right across the country, Freighter Group ensures its reach is far and wide.
Greg L’Estrange, Executive Chairman of Freighter Group says its expansion across the nation ensures there is always a Freighter representative close by.
“At Freighter Group, it is important to us that our customers are never too far away,” he says.
“If our customers are ever on the road looking for help, we will be ready to assist and willing to support whenever we are needed.
“Using our network, we want to ensure that our customers have the opportunity to be serviced or have a problem fixed as quickly as possible, to get them back on the road.”
L’Estrange says one of Freighter Group’s long-term goals is to fill in the map, ensuring connections throughout the whole country, especially the west coast.
“This will be done by either expanding our own dealer network or through independent dealers that we distribute our products through,” he says.
“We will also support independent dealers with our spare parts, a section of the business we have recently expanded.
“This expansion has allowed the business to continue its evolving mission to meet the diverse needs of our customers nationwide.”
L’Estrange says the Freighter Group network is ready to assist its customers with all spare trailer parts needs.
“Freighter Group has a wide range of genuine spare parts across our original equipment (OE) trailer brands, ensuring our customers are looked after when they are in need of spare parts for any of our products,” he says.
“We have spent a lot of time developing this sector of the business for distribution around Australia.”
L’Estrange says the spare parts servicing supports the company’s ethos – “We ‘freight it’ for life.”
“We want to sell our new trailers, and we want to service those trailers, but of course we also want to sell parts to those trailers to keep them running for as long as possible,” he says.
“Customers might have a highly productive trailer, which might last them seven to 10 years or with a less intense workload that will last them 10 to 20 years.
“Either way, we want to establish a lifelong relationship with our customers and be there for them for the entirety of the product’s lifecycle.”
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Refurbishing home base
To continue its work in providing a range of innovative solutions and services for the road and transportation sector, Freighter Group recently undertook a major facility upgrade of its Ballarat location.
L’Estrange says the upgrade included modernisations and the installation of new technology.
“This upgrade ensures our business remains a competitive supplier of trailers in Australia, all while remaining globally competitive in price and in quality,” he says.
“Over the past two to three years, we have invested thoroughly in this expansion, acquiring the latest technology. All with the aim of transforming the Australian trailer manufacturing industry and helping keep Freighter Group ahead of the game.”
Some of the new technology housed at the Ballarat facility includes laser cutting for steel, robotic welding, robotic grit blasters, new storage facilities and an overall expansion of the footprint of the site, to name a few.
L’Estrange says the modern technology will be used to continue building high quality products for its customers, while helping Freighter Group to be more agile in an ever-evolving transport and infrastructure landscape.
“This facility has also established our footprint in Ballarat as a major manufacturer,” he says.
“We have a strong belief of being connected to all communities and we are proud to support Ballarat.”
In addition to its customers, Freighter Group acknowledges the hard work of all its staff which has led to the company’s success in consistently providing high-quality, comprehensive services.
L’Estrange says the newly upgraded facility provides Ballarat employees certainty for the future.
“When you have a facility that’s not competitive and hasn’t been invested in for a long period of time, there are always concerns whether that facility has a future and in-turn its staff members,” he says.
“With the new upgrades to Ballarat and even more planned for the future, Freighter Group has no plans to leave any time soon.”
After a year of planning works, and years of expansions, L’Estrange says the facility is in top shape and ready for all to see.
“The renovations are largely complete. However, when you have a manufacturing facility, things will never be fully complete. There will always be new technology to include and more to expand,” says L’Estrange.
“Our business is always looking to stay current, if not ahead of the game when it comes to technology.
“We are excited for the future and to invite customers to come in and pay us a visit while seeing the exciting upgrades.”
This article was originally published in the May edition of our magazine. To read the magazine, click here.
