The arrival of Chinese trucks in the South African market has generated a great deal of interest, not least because they appear to offer exceptional value for money. However, mainstream South African operators have the reputation of being extremely conservative, and have shown a traditional reluctance to purchase new brands, irrespective of pricing, until ample evidence of their reliability, and durability under local operating conditions has been established, and an appropriate level of service and parts support has been proven for the product.

Leithcons Civils and Earth Moving, based in Hercules, Pretoria, purchased its first POWERSTAR truck in 2005, and has subsequently acquired a total of 14 similar units. These trucks were put to work in a mixed fleet of 200 on-road vehicles, including directly comparable products of European and Japanese origin, engaged in mining and construction contracts across several provinces of South Africa. Typical operating conditions encountered by Leithcons’ vehicles include working around the clock, seven days a week, on dirt roads, with shifts of drivers taking turns at the wheel to enable distances of 800 kilometres to be covered in a working day.

One of the Leithcons vehicles, a POWERSTAR 26-28K tipper, has now reached the highly significant milestone of one million kilometers travelled, under these arduous conditions, without any unscheduled maintenance to its major components. This unit is a three-axled, tandem-drive, short wheelbase tipper chassis, rated at a Gross Vehicle Mass of 26 tons. It is powered by a 9,7-litre Weichai WD615 Euro-2 compliant turbocharged and intercooled 6-cylinder diesel engine, developing 206 kW and 1160 Nm of torque, driving through a 9-speed 5S150 GP synchromesh gearbox to a pair of HL7 hub reduction rear drive axles. Other specification features include ZF 8098 power steering, dual-circuit full air brakes, and 315/80 R22,5 tubeless radial tyres mounted on 9,00x22,5 single piece steel wheel rims.

Mr. Leith Polson, Managing Director at Leithcons, says: “Our original decision to purchase POWERSTAR vehicles was influenced by highly attractive front-end pricing, well-proven major components, and the excellent 10 cubic metre Cargolite tipping body built at their Pietermaritzburg plant. We recognized that choosing a product with limited operational history in South Africa was a bold move, but we were encouraged by POWERSTAR’s declared commitment to parts supply, and the exceptional value for money that was on offer. We can now say that POWERSTAR have delivered on their promises, and that we are impressed with the minimal downtime experienced with our POWERSTAR trucks, beyond normal monthly servicing.  The performance of this vehicle, together with a number of others that are not far behind in terms of distance covered, has totally justified our decision to purchase POWERSTAR, and we plan to add more to our fleet in future”.

Frans Cloete, MD of POWERSTAR’s South African distributors, comments: “The performance of this truck, which has come as no surprise to those of us at POWERSTAR and the Bei Ben plant in China, serves to underline the superb value proposition that these products offer to the South African market. However, we realize fully that our claims of design integrity, durability and serviceability can only be substantiated by operators under real-world conditions, and Leithcons’ experience, detailed above, confirms that POWERSTAR trucks can take on extremely severe local conditions, and achieve the levels of performance, reliability and operating economy demanded by the most discerning of operators. Our strategy for Africa is simple: basic design, like for like performance, exceptional fuel consumption and service support where you need it when you need it, all at very affordable cost! Now we have proven them all.”

“Our strategy with POWERSTAR has been to position it differently from other Chinese products in the market, in that we have been fully transparent in reporting our detailed monthly sales volumes to the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (NAAMSA). To-date, nearly 1 400 POWERSTAR units have entered service with South African operators, and, with the confirmation and endorsement of the product’s capabilities now provided by the million-kilometre Leithcons vehicle, we have established a solid platform from which to offer our extensive range of premium-payload products to the full spectrum of South African users, from individual owner-drivers to the largest professionally-managed fleets, with full confidence”.


Powerstar head office:
Tel:     011 5655300
Email:  info.sgip@supergrp.com