"I love the smell of napalm in the morning." These words were immortalised in the movie Apocalypse Now. For the trucking industry, that saying could well be altered to: "I love the smell of an order in the daytime."

That smell wafted across to the offices of FleetWatch last month and we followed it to McCarthy Truck Centre in Centurion where we found an extremely chuffed MD, Frank van Heerden, waiting for a group of men to emerge from the boardroom. When the door opened, there were smiles all round as Derek Reinhardt and Fernando Lavos of Reinhardt Transport and Amalgamated Bulk - along with a herd of others - emerged.

Even the big man of McCarthy Holdings himself, Brand Pretorius, had taken time out of his day to pop in and congratulate the parties on what Tjaart Kruger, sales consultant for McCarthy Truck Center, describes to FleetWatch as an "historical' order.

And so it is for it's not every day you get an order for 50 brand new vehicles - in this case, 50 Actros model 1835s. What's more, this order follows a previous order signed in April for 20 new Actros trucks - 10 of which were went into the Reinhardt Transport fleet and 10 into Amalgamated Bulk.

You don't need a calculator to work out that this totals 70 trucks bought from McCarthy Truck Centre by these two companies since April this year. Van Heerden puts the total value of these orders at R47-million.

By way of explanation, there are three sister companies which, although operating independently, are linked at management level via shareholding structures with Derek Reinhardt holding a majority share in each. The third company is Chrome Carriers.

And here's the real good news. While there are certainly many problems facing this industry, there are still opportunities for growth. According to Derek Reinhardt, the 50 new trucks are additions to the Amalgamated Bulk fleet bought to service a new contract. Fernando Lavos, who heads Amalgamated Bulk, would not expand on details of contract. The previous 20 vehicles were bought as replacement vehicles for the two fleets.

But why Actros? Are they confident of the reliability given the past problems experienced on certain Actros models? On this point, Reinhardt could well be employed as an advertising copy writer for Mercedes. "I've found over the years that there is no problem too big that Mercedes can't solve. The back-up from the company and McCarthy has always been excellent."

That's a great tribute considering he first started buying Merc products some 12 years back with small orders for one or two trucks. He's come a long way since then and interesting is that Kruger has walked the road with him selling him over 100 trucks since 1990.

"I remember well those early days when he ran a small operation. It has increased substantially in size but the great thing is that the man himself hasn't changed. He remains an absolute gentleman," says Kruger. Now that's what one calls a long-term win-win relationship.

Patrick O'Leary