The person at the steering wheel of Centurion is CEO Justin CardacI, who took over as CEO of the company about ten years ago, has a strong family lineage at Centurion.
The company was started in 1971 by his father Carl and his uncle Frank CardacI, and the name of the company came from the brother’s shared ambition to build a fleet of 100 trucks. That goal has long been met and exceeded with Centurion now boasting a fleet of just under 1000 trucks and more than 5000 pieces of equipment, spanning the nation from West to East and North to South. The company operates 34 sites nationwide and has more than 2400 employees
Justin Cardaci worked in the company for many years, in his words ‘Growing up around Centurion’, working his way up the ladder, but left and started his own business around 2006. That was part of the family rules, established at Centurion by Dad Carl and Uncle Frank. He later returned to the company in 2012, but had to apply for the job and go through the interview process to secure the job.
“Nepotism is definitely not a thinking in our family,” said Justin.
He became CEO in 2015 and has overseen the massive growth of Centurion in the past decade.
Asked about the size and gravity of the Centurion electrification project, Cardaci says the ambition was to keep improving and to reduce the carbon footprint of the company operations.
“I think if you look at our fleet, over the last 10 to 12 years, we’ve been very quick to adopt the latest Euro standards, and understanding as our business has grown, our carbon footprint grows significantly as well,” said Justin.
“Really strengthening relationships with OEMs over the last decade, and seeing what new technology they’ve been bringing forward has probably enabled us to say, okay, this is definitely a path for us that we seek value in and seeing as reducing our overall footprint,” he added
The application that Centurion has applied to its new electric truck fleet is the Perth metro pick up and delivery service, which presented an opportunity for it to be brought back in house, after several years contracting it out to other operators.
“Yep, it was something that we had contracted out in recent years to concentrate on our long distance operations, but we saw it as a fantastic application for technology and a great learning environment for us to actually put this product to work,” Cardaci said.
“At various times over the course of the last 15 years, we’ve insourced it, and also outsourced it, so we’ve done both, however it is a shift away from what we traditionally do, but it’s just in sourcing and moving away from a contractor,” he said
“It was definitely the catalyst for us, but also, when we looked at this project, we saw other people were doing electric trucks, and we sort of put our toe in the water in 2021 with an E canter, which is still on the fleet, but now based over in Mackay,” he said.
“It was charging off the grid, but we saw the real value and the real opportunity with a 100 per cent off grid project, so that solar into a battery was the differentiator for us,” Cardaci added.
“At the moment, we’re still absolutely in the learning phase of the deployment. with the last 10 trucks have only being deployed today.
“We anticipated this was never going to be parity for what it was costing us previously, we were well aware that this was about learning and a quick learning cycle for us to get us to parity, and we expected to go past that,” he said.
Cardaci reckons that the 20 eActros electric Mercedes that have run on its fleet since February, has seen very strong levels of driver performance reliability and that they’ve really looked to deliberately employ a different type of driver.
“I think one of the really exciting parts for us is that since we forged a a partnership with a sporting organisation, a special football club, which basically works with neurodiverse people, offering pathways, through sport to work, and we looked at where we could really work with them,” said Justin.
‘We are offering employment opportunities for people who may not have had the opportunity in the truck industry and our first person to work in one of our trucks was Blake. Just seeing how proud he is of his truck, and how he is really enjoying every part of the job, was just fantastic to see,” he said.
“That really rubs off on the rest of the drivers and they’re acknowledging something different, something new, and exciting to be part of it,” he added.
“ I think if you look at our business over time, we don’t wave too many flags. We know where we want to be, we’re committed to where we want to be, and understand the purpose of why we’re doing something, however this was definitely a flag waving exercise for us.
“This was about being real, even though it’s a pretty expensive flag, but it’s a real project, getting a real understanding, and then for us understanding where we can deploy this technology elsewhere in the business,” he said
As we watch the large fleet of fork trucks rushing around the Centurion facility the LP gas tanks stood out as another opportunity for this go ahead company to master its carbon footprint.
“Having infrastructure here now gives us a different view of how we can actually look at forklift charging on site, and probably the first part that we’re looking at is our bigger capacity forklifts and how we can actually split the charging infrastructure against some of those assets as well.
“We’ve got a bit of work under underway at the moment with the potential to take to have a switch in place, which allows us to switch the depot off the grid so it still doesn’t connect our system, but it would then have a switch that connects it to the battery and allows us to run the depot from the battery. So we’re looking at that, it’s just a no brainer, we know, we can do that,” he said.
The company is about to call a major tender for a new fleet of forktrucks and its pretty likely they will be powered by electrons not by LPG.
“I also think ARENA is now saying that this is a real project. We’ve delivered on it, it’s working, we’re honoring our commitments, and so I think there’s definitely a strong relationship now,” Cardaci said.
When quizzed about Centurion’s flirtation with hydrogen fuel a few years ago, Cardaci was not totally dismissive, but believes it could be some way off, and that clean diesel will fulfill a major role in the nearer future.
“I think it’s hard, I think the hydrogen technology works but I think it’s the production and availability of hydrogen that becomes the issue,” he said.
“It’s not a cheap process and we were involved with H2 refuelers at one stage in South Perth, and found it a very complex and difficult project to get up and running, and I think with the speed, of battery technology probably over the last couple of years, has seen hydrogen start to really slow down. I
think there’s still a place for it but I’m not sure when at the moment,” he said.
“I think alternate fuels are going to play a path for us but the hydrogen piece just seems a long, long way off as a fuel supply at the moment.
“At the kind of capacity that Centurion needs, the reality is. diesel is going to be a key fuel and so then it comes down to us operating the most modern fleet, with hyper economic vehicles, the latest Euro standards, and making sure we’re burning the most minimal amount of diesel for every kilometre we travel will be the most important factor in the short term,” Cardaci said.
We asked Cardaci what it was that led Centurion to start such an ambitious project, and whether it was good corporate governance and citizenship, an attenmpt to try to satisfy particular customer demands, or just being ahead of the game?
“I think it’s got elements of all those components, but then I also think for us, we were keeping an eye on where technology was going and I was fortunate enough to see pre-production vehicles in Germany going back probably six years, and I could see this was coming,” he said.
“ We just weren’t sure how it was coming at us and as far as I am concerned the genesis was a conversation with Hamish McHaffie about the potential of this project.
“We knew ARENA was there and though how do we bring this together, what’s the point of difference for us, and how do we actually make this commercially viable?”
“I know we were not going to bleed from it, but understood that it would be a standalone commercial project that was probably not that attractive commercially, but we thought, how do we use this as a learning exercise for the business to accelerate our decal journey?”
Cardaci reckons he has also been pleasantly surprised with the reliability of the electric trucks since they have come on the fleet.
“There was an expectation that there was going to be some significant time on the hook for these new trucks, and we’re realistic, we understand new technology, but we expected it. However, so far we’ve towed just one truck. We thought we had a battery issue with that truck, but it worked out that the driver wasn’t pulling up close enough to the charger stop, so the charging cable wasn’t quite connecting properly,” he said.
“ So there’s been lots of little learnings, but on the whole, for a new fleet, new product in the market, it’s been very reliable,” Cardaci added.
Cardaci says Centurion has been a Daimler customer since 2013 and Justin reckons it has been a very strong partner having switched from another Euro brand to embrace, Mercedes, Freighliner and Fuso.
With the solar array and off grid charging network now up and running Cardaci reckons It’s now concentrating on navigating day to day business and seeing what the next technology advance will be.
“ I think everyone knows the market’s probably a little bit more challenging at the moment, but I think we’re very clear on where our strengths are, as well as the business that we want to do, and we’re also really clear on the business that we don’t want to be sucked into. For us it’s about continuing to work with our customers to provide that essential remote, regional support,” said Cardaci.
“I think for us as the technology evolves, its going to be an access to power, whether it’s off grid or on grid, and as the business cases stand up, we’ll deploy more electric trucks, but we’re not setting hard targets,” he added.
“This has been a big project for us to undertake, and it’s a big project for any company to undertake, but now for us, it’s about getting the learnings out of it and how we can deploy that across the country,” he said.
Cardaci said that projects like this are not just about Centurion but frame the whole industry.
“Speaking to other colleagues in the industry that have deployed electric trucks over on the east coast with charging infrastructure ands energy infrastructure, it’s just not as easy as people might think,” he said.
“But the thought of the amount that needs to be doing with these kind of things across the industry, is massive, absolutely massive and so we need to be making good decisions and good points about what makes sense for this business and the locations and all that kind of stuff,” Cardaci concluded.
