| Past
Issues |
February
2005 |
With all-round predictions of another positive year ahead, it was apt that the first function attended by
FleetWatch for 2005 was a celebration of success - the 40th birthday of the Toyota Dyna.
Patrick O'Leary was there.
What do you do when you celebrate a birthday? You invite your friends over of course. That's exactly what Toyota Trucks did when its Dyna turned 40 years old in January. They hired Gerotek as the venue and invited a number of their long-time friends to join them in toasting the birthday boy - or is that girl?
When this model first arrived on our shores back in 1965, it had a definite boy-like look to it. That's changed over the years and the look is now extremely cute and pretty - slinky and sleeky with curves in all the right places. In some applications - such as at Sun City where it's used to ferry dare-devils up and down the mountain to ride the world's fastest 'foofie-slide' - the look is even 'Funky'.
Without doubt, it's developed into a real 'cutie' but here's the quandry: Underneath that cute look is a lot of boy-like grunt that ensures it matches up to the hardest task. Whatever you want to call it - boy or girl - the Dyna has left its mark on the 67 898 friends it has made since being born in 1965.
What struck me when I went around talking to some of those friends who attended the party, is how the Dyna has successfully made its way into such a large number of diverse operations: From underground to security; from ice-cream deliveries to steel deliveries; from furniture removals to people carriers. Versatility is normally attributed to vans rather than chassis cabs but the applications in which the Dyna has found itself operating over the years serves to throw new light on the chassis cab as a multi-purpose unit.
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AND
here’s
the Dyna being used to haul the stunning ‘Harley’
belonging to Imperial Truck Rental’s MD, Eileen
Caramanus. Ain’t she a beauty? We’re talking of the
truck, the bike and the rider, of course. The Dyna is a
real stalwart in the truck rental industry. |
It's operational flexibility has been one of the strengths of the Dyna over the years and what has added to this attraction is that from an initial one model offering in 1965, Toyota Trucks now offers 10 model derivatives in the 3 500kg to 8 500 kg GVM segment in which the Dyna competes.
That it has sold 67 898 since 1965 tells that companies love it. However, how do the people that interact with it daily feel about it? At the party were a host of drivers from the various companies and
FleetWatch took the opportunity to talk to them to get their feelings about the Dyna.
Declan Harris, a tour guide with Sunway Safaris, a company which operates tours in and around South Africa and into Africa right up to Nairobi, was a guest I would never had expected to be there. After all, when one thinks safaris, one thinks 4x4 type 'thugs' such as the Samil. You wouldn't expect a Dyna to be hauling tourists into darkest Africa. Yet it does...and most successfully.
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THAT
funky little truck - the Dyna 4-093 which transports
people from the main hotel at Sun City to the top af a
koppie - the start of the 2km long foefie
slide! |
"We operate in all weather conditions over good and bad road surfaces and we've never experienced problems. It has been an ideal vehicle for our operations," he told me. If you're carrying tourists, the last thing you want is to be stuck on the side of the road - especially in some mosquito infected swamp. A major consideration in buying the Dynas - the company now operates six - was therefore the back-up service. "Toyota has a major presence in Africa through its dealer network so if we do experience a break-down, the back-up is there for us," said Declan. He then waxed lyrical about other attributes until eventually I stopped him and asked: "Is there anything bad you can say about it?"
"Well yes," he replied. "The canopy roof tends to leak. But then again, Toyota didn't manufacture or fit it. We had it fitted afterwards." Aaaargh!
I wandered round looking for someone else who might slate the birthday star. A bit of slander would be quite juicy. As much as I tried to find wrong, I couldn't. Everyone had praise. The group of drivers I gathered round for a general discussion spoke of its comfort and ease of driving, its reliability, its performance, it good fuel consumption compared to other marques - and so n, and so on.
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HAROLD
Barnard (left) GM Toyota Trucks and Jannie Koegelenberg,
Toyota Trucks’ newly appointed senior manager, truck
sales, paid high tribute to the Dyna as a real star in the
Toyota family. |
A classic one-liner came from Jonas Maseko of Sunbake, a company which operates in the harsh and non-compromising arena of bread deliveries. This is a highly competitive sector where if you arrive late at a customer, you could easily lose that day's sale to a competitor who has arrived before you. Timeous delivery is critical for success. With this as background, here's the one-liner: "You cannot have breakdowns because you will be late and if I need no breakdowns, I must have a Dyna."
Jonas, if ever you get tired of delivering bread, there is a job in Toyota's advertising agency just waiting for you.
I'm not trying to puff up Dyna but all the drivers I spoke to had nothing but good to say - and they are the guys who are in the company of the birthday star every day. That says more for the Dyna than anything else. It's a good friend to its friends - many of which we have featured on these pages.
They say life begins at 40. If that is so, then we can expect to see bigger things from the Dyna in the future because it sure as heck has enjoyed a good life up to the age of 40.
