Just when you thought there was already too many truck brands on the Australian market, Chinese manufacturer Dongfeng is asking you to think otherwise.
The Dongfeng name won’t be used on the trucks the brand will sell in Australia, with the local distributor, KRW Motor Group, opting to use the DFAC Australia brand instead. Yes DFAC is a truck brand, not a government department in Canberra.
The new Chinese brand arrives here with some bold predictions from KRW CEO and founder Neil Wang who claims that it will ‘have the opportunity in the next two or three years to become the leading truck brand in Australia.
it is a bold claim from Wang who despite being challenged on the claim would not back away from the ambitious target eventually conceding that the numbers may include buses and the other Chinese truck brand his company already markets, Foton Mobility.
Dongfeng has manufactured more than 63 million vehicles since 1969 and is the second largest truck manufacturer in China with a claimed global sales of more than four million commercial vehicles since 2000. The company is said to have assembled 301,000 trucks last year and exported them to more than 100 countries.
Wang has recruited former Hino and SEA Electric executive Bill Gillespie to run the truck operation, in charge of both the new DFAC brand and the Foton Mobility range, which he has been overseeing for the past two years.
The company says it has been working hard recruiting a dealer network, claiming seven have already been signed up for the brand.
The dealers it listed included two who are established regional Isuzu outlets, one who is a GWM and Kia car dealer in regional WA, another who is currently a diesel and electric truck service centre in Adelaide, a used truck dealer Movens in Melbourne, a Brisbane operation that sells Chinese heavy duty brand Sitrak and a Newcastle based Toyota/Mercedes-Benz car dealership, which was also claimed to be a Hyundai Truck dealer, but which appears to have shut its Korean truck operation down in recent times.
Gillespie says that the DFAC brand will have 22 service, parts and sales sites around Australia. and that along with the current dealers who have already signed up, says there will be another four coming on board soon.
One can only imagine that Isuzu would not be pleased that some of its dealers had signed to the Chinese brand and could 
potentially make life difficult for them, but Gillespie and Wang are unswayed by any potential issues for its newly signed outlets, saying the foundation dealers will form a larger scale network in coming months.
Only three of the new dealers are in capital cities, one in Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane while the others are at Bunbury in WA, Geelong and Ballarat in Victoria and Newcastle.
Whether KRW’s ambition of becoming the leading commercial vehicle operation in the country has any chance or not will hinge on its further dealer recruitment in the near future because history dictates that no automotive brand has ever achieved success in this country without a strong dealer network, however at the moment there are just seven, and at this point in time that won’t cut it in this market, in our opinion. However KRW is adamant more will be announced soon.
However the product and the price value equation they present may well be the thing that helps the operation move metal.
The brand will sell the DFAC trucks using the brand’s Captain name plate, with the Captain 45 model on sale now in both a 4.5 tonne GVM car licence friendly entry level model, and also as a six-tonne GVM light rigid variant.
The larger Captain C model, which is due to arrive in the next couple of months, will offer both an 8.8 tonne GVM and 12 tonne GVM variant as well, and will be powered by a 4.5 litre Cummins diesel with a two-pedal transmission of some sort.
Two electric Captain45e battery electric powered trucks will become part of the line up in Australia early next year. KRW already sells Foton Mobility electric trucks in Australia and both Wang and Gillespie are adamant that the new DFAC brand’s electric machines won’t cannibalise its current Foton Mobility sales.
“The DFAC will be a retail brand and Foton is a corporate brand that sells into large and established fleets like Woolworths,” said Gillespie.
The initial Captain 45 model will be powered by a Cummins D Series 2.5 litre turbo diesel producing 160hp and 400Nm of torque and will be mated to a six-speed Eaton FAST AMT gearbox as well as a Dana rear drive axle.
“This engine is part of the global Cummins program that’s supported in Australia by 23 Cummins sites and in terms of warranty, we will stand by the warranty ourselves, and we will make decisions likely about warranty, so no one has to wait for us to go back to China,” Gillespie said.
Wang and Gillespie told us they would be heavily leaning in to the ‘ready to work’ model that the Japanese truck makes have pioneered and had success with, and the initial offering will see 
a Captain 45 equipped with a locally built alloy tray at a driveaway price of $59,995, which seems a pretty keen price. This is especially so with the new distributor offering it with a seven year or 250,000km warranty.
locally built alloy tray is a 4.5m x 2m unit with a load capacity of 2,000kg, with three crossbeams for transporting of longer materials including ladders, a rear cabin protection screen and dropdown sides
The Captain 45 also has a 3.5-tonne towing capacity
There will also be a short wheelbase 2800mm model which will be available for order next month, and a turn key ready to work tipper also with a 2800mm wheelbase and a 2.2 cubic metre tipper body. No prices were available for these two models just yet.
KRW says the trucks will be fully equipped with a full suite of electronic safety systems including lane departure warning, an AEBS system and cyclist and pedestrian detection as standard. KRW said that the new trucks meet all ADR requirements and meet Cabin Strength Certification (ECE-R29).
Other standard features include driver and passenger airbags, high-resolution reverse camera and parking sensor, adaptive cruise control, smart phone mirroring, a multi-function steering wheel, LCD instrument panel and a 13” infotainment screen compatible with Apple Carplay and Android Auto.
No indications of what the other models including the current six-tonne variant will be priced at, but it was intimated that the ‘pencil will be sharp’! Similarly the eight tonne and 12-tonne models are yet to have price tags attached as yet.
KRW says it has signed agreements with NTI Truck Assist to provide 24/7 roadside assistance and also inked an insurance deal with it as well, while the company told us it has also done a deal with Angle Finance for finance solutions, with both retail and also floor plans for its dealers, and also said it is working with fleet partners.
“I would suggest we’re one of the only new entrants in the truck market that have a fully maintained operating leasewhich fleet partners are supporting, that means you can buy the truck now after and five years, if you return the truck, it’s got a guaranteed residual. I don’t think anyone else can offer that,” Gillespie said.
Wang and Gillespie say the deal to bring the new brand to Australia has been more than two years in the making since visiting China in 2024 for the initial contact.
“We’re coming up nearly two years on this project, so we didn’t just decide that we would bring the trucks in on a whim, this has taken a lot of development work on the product here in Australia , getting the vehicle type approval done for Australia, and the development work and so on, and then also locating the best dealers for the group, getting the parts support in place, and so on,” said Gillespie
“It is not an off-the-shelf truck, it has been specified for the Australian market with DFAC bringing together its own team and key OEM partners to ensure design and ingenuity,” Wang told us.
“The Australian market is very competitive with one in every three vehicles over 3.5-tonnes sold in the light truck segment and we feel that the Captain 45 and the upcoming DFAC models will offer a compelling choice for the local truck 
operator,” he added.
“The Australian truck market is buoyant and the need for quality light duty trucks for a wide range of industries continues to grow.
“Businesses from the owner-operator through to large scale fleets understand the need for the right truck for their needs. We are confident that DFAC can be amongst the brands and models they should consider.
“What customers will quickly discover is that DFAC is the smart truck to own across the total vehicle experience.”
Wang was at pains to point out that KRW is a 100 per cent Australian owned operation since he established it in 2021. Prior to that he had had some success running a bus importation business bringing buses to this market from his native China. He is still in the bus business and includes those sales figures in his ambitions to top the Australian commercial vehicle market
“We have grown the business from four to 50 people and we have grown our revenue o $45 million before the end of this financial year, and we are forecasting double that in the next four months,” said Wang.
With his other Chinese truck brand Foton Mobility Wang points out that brand is the top selling full battery electric truck brand in this country and that in the last five years it has sold more than 250 EV trucks.
“We are number one in Australia in EV commercial vehicles, we sold more than 130 EV city buses, and we have also sold seven hydrogen city bus and two hydrogen prime movers in Australia,” Wang said proudly.
Time will tell if DFAC can make a dent on the Australian light and medium truck market, if Neil Wang’s resolve and drive has anything to do with it he may well position the Chinese brand as an alternative to the dominant Japanese brand triumvirate, but it will be no easy task.
