“Reliability and fuel economy, that’s what I want.”

Emerald Carrying Company deliver fuel from the coastal terminals to locations all over Queensland. After trialling a Trident, they’re going for Macks.

“I always wanted to cart fuel”

Bill and Joan Haylock started the Emerald Carrying Company in 1965 to provide general freight haulage services. Since then, Managing Director Greg Haylock and his pothers Peter and David have taken over the business, and Greg has managed to scratch a long-standing itch.

“I always wanted to cart fuel,” says Greg, “and I got to know the Ampol agent here in Emerald pretty well. It was just a matter of time.”

When the agent put his fuel deliveries out to tender in 1994, Emerald bid for the business and won it.

“Some days I wish he hadn’t given it to us,” says Greg with a laugh, “I could be sitting on a beach now instead of doing this, but we haven’t looked back since.”

Leaps and bounds

Since winning that job, Emerald have gone from strength-to-strength, now fielding 250 staff and a fleet of 90 trucks hauling single trailers, B-doubles and road trains. After experiencing reliability issues with the engines of some of his American trucks, Greg looked to Mack for an alternative.

“We already had some Volvos, and I knew that a lot of the Volvo technology was in the Macks now, so we trialled a Trident. It went really well so we bought a few more, and we’ve got a Super-Liner coming into the fleet in a few weeks to do triple road trains hauling fuel out of Townsville.”

It’s all about fuel...

Emerald Carrying Company has made fuel a speciality, so much so that general freight now constitutes only 15% of the business. Typical routes see the trucks picking up in the fuel terminals of Mackay, Rockhampton, Townsville and Brisbane, and delivering all over Queensland.

“The trucks have some long distances to cover,” says Greg, “we do everything from the local service station in Longreach to the mines at Mt Isa. We’re typically running 65-tonne B-Doubles and road trains up to 135 tonnes depending on the destination. One thing I like about the Macks is their fuel economy. This can be hard to measure when you’ve got different drivers in the same truck, but they’re doing pretty well.”

...and reliability

The Macks have proven to be solid performers, and the drivers have taken to them, especially the m DRIVE automated manual transmission.

“I was interested in the m DRIVE because I’ve got a few Volvos with I-Shift,” says Greg, “and it’s great. The drivers love the Macks because they’re smooth and quiet, one of them said to me other day he reckoned the Trident was the best truck he’d ever driven.”

Neither the first nor the last

“We’ve had Macks on and off since we started,” says Greg, “and if these new models are anything to go by, they definitely won’t be the last Macks we buy.”