THE DEFINITIVE TRUCKING SITE

September 2008

The cash-in-transit vehicle developed by TFM and its partners has experienced great market success. This will now fall under the Projects Team.

TFM Industries has undergone a successful restructuring of its business in response to changing and challenging market conditions. 

TFM MD, Johan van der Merwe, says it is important to continuously create the necessary internal conditions to ensure the long-term sustainability of an organisation. 

“In essence, our latest action is a diversification strategy based on a wide range of sector products being managed by highly focused teams. In this way we can achieve our ultimate goal – to continue giving excellent customer service all the time,” he says. 

The company is a diverse, highly customer focused provider of specialist truck bodies and solutions to a wide range of customers. In line with its philosophy of excellent customer focus backed by innovative ideas, TFM has benchmarked best practises the world over. 

In this process it has developed partnerships with world leading players in their respective industries. These include: Theam from France; Faun, Meiller, Schwing Stetter and Doppstadt, all German; PZB and Ferrari from Italy and Heil and Marathon from the US 

Construction Team

This division has a wide range of products including custom made concrete mixers, fully imported Stetter concrete mixers, a range of Schwing truck and trailer-mounted concrete pumps, a wide range of concrete batching plants and tipper solutions, and vacuum and water tankers. 

“In the revised structure, our construction team focuses completely on these products and the solutions they can bring customers in the construction industry,” says Van Der Merwe. 

Headed by industry stalwart Allan Pletschke, the construction division’s flagship product, the concrete mixer, grew from a few units in 1980 to nearly 300 projected for 2008, with Pletschke involved from the start. Today, the Mark 4 TFM mixer competes with the best in the world. 

Ten years ago, on the back of a burgeoning construction customer base, TFM entered the tipper and tanker market and began exploiting this market’s potential to the fullest when it acquired the Meiller agency in 2003.

”Meiller is one of the world leaders in specialised truck body-building and TFM’s partnership with them has proven to be particularly successful. Today, many leading industry players want nothing else but our Meiller bodies - often with the Mercedes Actros 3331k or MAN 33.360 chassis. The class of these combinations has become a brand statement for many prestigious companies,” says Pletschke. 

Environmental Equipment Team. 

TFM is the leading South African manufacturer and supplier of specialised equipment and vehicles for the waste management industry and has forged international partnerships with some of the world’s best known players including Faun, Doppstadt and Heil. 

Shaun Harrop, director in charge of this division says that, like the construction division, the waste management division is highly focused on the range of products and solutions it can offer to the diverse customer base. 

“The waste management industry is changing rapidly the world over including in South Africa. The pressure on landfill sites in the larger urban areas is beginning to see delivery of the materials to changing destinations, usually far from the point of collection,” says Harrop. 

He says the result is increased rationalisation and automation in collection and, of course, the requisite optimisation of transport, which will necessitate investment by the municipalities in the most modern equipment and techniques. “It is in the provision of the best technology and most pertinent system solutions for the task at hand that we are giving our utmost attention,” he says. 

A FAUN Rotorpress, part of TFM’s environmental division’s waste compacting offering.

Industrial Components Team

Part of the restructuring was to install a team to focus on the Industrial Components division, which has now developed into a serious supplier of spares and components to the commercial vehicle and transport industries. 

Apart from carrying stock of spares and accessories for the products of TFM and it’s principals in Europe and the USA, which TFM represent in southern Africa, TFM Industrial Components distributes a wide range of componentry to the transport industry including fifth wheels, kingpins, landing legs, couplings and, in addition to PTOs and hydraulic pumps, an expanded range of hydraulic components. 

Lourens Potgieter, general manager Industrial Components, says the recent appointment of industry stalwart Reg Waterford as national marketing and sales manager will help considerably in the division’s expansion plans. “Reg has extensive experience in the trucking industry and we look forward to his partnership with operations manager Zach Makhale in taking this business forward,” says Potgieter. 

Waterford says that one of his first priorities will be to expand the range even further especially in terms of the hydraulics basket. “We’ll be looking at a range of new products in the valve componentry, hydraulic cylinders and under and front-body heist areas,” he says. 

Projects Team 

Van der Merwe says the company’s Projects Division deals with either once-off, custom designed projects, like specialist ramps for loading cars onto Transwerke train trucks, or vehicles that are inherently complex in terms of finishing. The latter includes armoured vehicles, mobile libraries, game viewers and the like. 

This division is also responsible for nurturing business lines into sustainable focussed businesses. The recent formation of TFM Cargo Bodies focussing on GRP bodies under Shaun van Rooyen’s leadership, is an example of these efforts. Other business lines being developed include special vehicle conversions for, among others, Land Rover and mini bus conversions.

“We regard our ability to provide tailor-made solutions as so important that we have created a special environment for both the conception and physical manufacture of these items,” says van der Merwe.

TFM director in charge of the Projects division, Hein Schulenburg, says that one of the most successful items produced by his division has been state of the art cash-in-transit (CIT) vehicles. 

“With the advent of CIT heists in South Africa, it become necessary to produce vehicles that would withstand the sophisticated weapons and tactics employed by the perpetrators,” says Schulenburg. 

Another area where this division has shown its ability to innovate and provide unique solutions for its customers is with specialised curtainsiders. He cites the oil drum carrying curtainsider project for Unitrans as “among the most challenging this unit has ever encountered.” 

“These are the most complex curtainsiders we’ve ever built and we’re not only pleased that our innovative solutions won us the contract but we also believe that their success is further testament to our ability to build ‘non-production line’ items efficiently,” says Schulenburg.