With fuel prices escalating, fuel consumption was a decisive issue for Warden Cartage to select a lighter-weight American truck for their fleet.

Durban-based Warden Cartage is a strong force in cross-border road transport, specialising in the transportation of fuel, solvents and chemicals from South African oil company depots with a lot of it going to cross-border bulk depots. It started off as a small family business just under 30 years ago and today is one of five independent, leading transport companies complying to the rigid rules laid down by the local petroleum industry for hazardous goods transport. Their company policy is to replace the fleet every three years with brand new trucks, which explains the clean look of its lightweight truck-tractor and trailer combinations as they move across Southern Africa.

The fuel price has gone through the roof and has made transport operators conscious of fuel consumption. The Rand has also gained in strength and when it became time to renew their fleet, Wardens looked at Freightliner.


Wardens go to great lengths to optimise driver/vehicle productivity and operate strict driver hours and have to comply with rigid rules on overloading and it even loads the tankers two or three tons below the legal maximum to be safe on weight distribution. Driver performance is constantly monitored and it sends its drivers through driver training programmes, run by a driver-trainer who is flown in from Cape Town, every two weeks to smooth out any problems.

Fuel consumption is now one of the biggest criteria in the transport business and consequently, before deciding on what to replace their fleet with, Warden ran fuel tests with the latest of competitive products including the Freightliner Argosy to see which vehicle best suited their needs. It was a contest in which the lightweight Argosy with its Cummins engine came out tops - with less than 55 lr/100 km fuel consumption on average on various routes, they said.

“We worked out a saving of R100 000 a month in fuel consumption which is more than R1-million a year over the whole fleet of 50. That is a vast difference and so fuel consumption became a major consideration,” said Bala Naidoo, CEO of Wardens Cartage.

The Freightliner NMI-DSM dealership in Westmead, Pinetown, was instrumental in the replacement exercise and a total of 50 Freightliner Argosy’s were purchased.

NMI-DSM Commercial Vehicles in Pinetown, with the seasoned John Nortje as the dealer principal, brought a lot of stability to the dealership especially during times when the Freightliner brand was affected by the exchange rates.

Today, the 14-bay workshop facility is a beehive of activity, serving a number of blue chip and smaller customers in KwaZulu Natal and now also responsible for the Wardens back-up service.

NMI-DSM is part of a network of four major Freightliner dealerships in the country with the other three located in Zandfontein Pretoria, Cargo Germiston and Belville Cape Town. This network is currently being extended to finally encompass a total of 17 service dealers all around the country.

Alan Fritz, Marketing Manager for Freightliner, said Freightliner target sales for this year were 600 units and that monthly sales were on or above target. Currently, more than 55% of Freightliners sold were equipped with Cummins engines, with Caterpillar and Detroit Diesel having about 27% each, but he expected the new 440hp Detroit Diesel engine gain more market share as there was considerable interest in it.

Well-known Freightliner customer now included Unitrans, HFR (Springs) Coolcat Carriers, Junior Smith Trucking, Hans Schaeffer, F.P. Du Toit (Namibia), the oldest Freightliner customer in Southern Africa who ordered his first Freightliner by writing the order on a serviette during the 1996 Namibia desert launch.