“The different models really suit our varied work.”

Garden Grove are a major supplier of landscape products in South Australia, and haul bulk products all over the south-east. Alicia Critchley explains why they use Macks. Keeping it in the family

Garden Grove started out from small beginnings twenty-five years ago when Brad’s father, a farmer, decided to make some money on the side carting landscaping products. After buying and storing some of these products himself, people began to ask him to provide them directly, and before he knew it he was running a landscaping supply operation.

Local and interstate

Today the two companies run a combined fleet of over a hundred trucks, 25 of which are Macks, and the percentage of Macks in the fleet is growing all the time.

“We’ve got a huge variety of loads and haulage tasks,” says Alicia Critchley, “but it peaks into two basic categories: local and interstate.”

While a local truck might start at 4am and spend all day driving around a quarry, or doing runs to the cement works carrying cement sand or salt, the line-haul trucks are covering some big distances on weekly patterns.

“A line-haul truck might go straight to Cununurra and back,” says Alicia, “or do a multi-pronged journey such as Mount Gambier, Mildura and Balranald. We carry a lot of red gum firewood from Balranald to Adelaide in the winter, it’s one of our best products.”

Bulk and more bulk

Whatever the distance, Garden Grove carry only bulk products.

“We’ve got Macks hauling 3 and 4-axle dogs as well as B-Doubles,” says Alicia, “and because of the different trailer configurations and distances involved we use a pretty poad range of trucks.”

The company has Mack Granites, Tridents and Super-Liners, each chosen for a specific application.

“We’re hauling gravel, concrete sand, fertilizer, grain, wine grapes, you name it, we’ll have a crack at anything bulk,” says Alicia, “it’s horses-for-courses, but the good thing about Mack is that they have a model of truck that’s suitable for just about every kind of load we want to haul, at least on the heavy haulage side.”

A very hardy piece of equipment

Not just right for the job, the Macks are also tough, reliable, and supported by Mack people.

“The Macks are a very hardy piece of equipment,” says Alicia, “and we’ve bought them for a long time, but it’s the guys at South Central Trucks that really got us over the line and convinced us to buy more of them. They’re fantastic to deal with and their service is excellent.”