Perth-based company Premium Plant Hire has just clocked up 14 years of operation since being established by its managing director Russel Wells in 2012 and has been been built on the promise of a premium service and premium products that can be dry hired to the mining industry.
Truck maker Scania has been selling its 8×4 workhorses to Premium for several years with the company hiring them out to mining operators as service vehicles, effectively keeping the big mining machinery running.
Premium Plant Hire has added a new Scania P 280 4×4 XT, the first of four of the new trucks to be added to the hire fleet with three set to be configured as water cart bodies and one as a service truck.
Wells started Premium Plant after a career in mining, initially as a heavy-duty diesel mechanic for mining industry original equipment manufacturers, before moving into sales and then rental.
He saw a gap gap in the market after noting how some hire companies sent unreliable or not fit for purpose equipment to site, which was the prompt that led to the creation of Premium Plant Hire. Wells’ aim was to specialise in premium equipment that was mine compliant, well maintained and reliable.
“Our business started off in plant hire and that’s still our core business, but we moved successfully into bodybuilding, and we have been very happy with Scania for bigger service trucks,” Wells said.
“We have about 80 vehicles hired out in total, and over the years we have built more than 200 body modules for the rental fleet and our customers,” he said.
“We’re now moving to Scania for smaller trucks based on the success we have had with the 8x4s,” he said.
Scania said its 4×4 is the smallest of the Scania off-road all-wheel drive platforms, alongside the 6×6 and 8×8 models which are familiar sights across the Australian mine sites.
Now the the 4×4 is set to prove that it is just as competent in terms of go-anywhere ability and a decent payload capacity.
“We run a lot of Scania 8x4s G 410s and G 420 XTs, probably between 30 and 40 of them,” Wells said.
“They are in service hired out across Australia, and the 4×4 is going to be a new Scania product line for us compared with what we have traditionally used,” he said.
“What we like about the Scania product is that is it just more robust than other trucks, and that’s critical when operating in the mining environment, and our Scania trucks spend their entire lives off-road, so the Scania XT specification is perfectly designed for our needs,” he said.
“The Scania XT has a heavy-duty front-end, with steel bumpers where the other brands use plastic, while the XT feels tough enough and it has the longevity.
“We aim to get seven years out of Scania, whereas other trucks will give us only three or four years for the same application,” he said.
“So when you’re looking at capital investment, fleet management and having a balanced fleet, that is important especially in the rental space,” Wells said.
“You need uptime and dependability and the Scania brand has been a powerful vehicle for Premium Plant, particularly with tier 1 owner miners.
“The new P 280 4x4s will be doing handling a very special application as water carts up in the Pilbara, filling up the drills which are always in very hard-to-access areas, so all-wheel drive is critical,” Wells said.
“Most bodybuilders use 6×4 platforms for water carts but I don’t think I’ve seen a 4×4 water truck before,” he said.
“We achieved 11,000 litres on the 4×4 Scania, which is right on the heels of any 6×4, but the main advantage is the ability to traverse difficult terrain safely,” he said.
Premium said that the engineering that has gone into the trucks from the factory, highlights Scania’s inherent robustness and suitability for mining applications, with their corrosion resistance, and body builder integration, being two qualities that enhance their attractiveness for mining applications. It added that the body builder integration makes fit-up easier and reduces the build time as well as the complexity while further adding to in-service reliability.
“Our Scania trucks are probably the best advertisement for Scania in the whole of Australia when it comes to operating in adverse environments,” Wells said.
“We had a Scania 8×4 at Koolan Island, off the coast north of Derby, for two or more years and basically they are operating in salt water the whole time,” Wells said.
“Despite this when we got the truck back and sent it through the workshop it was amazing how well the Scania stood up to the highly corrosive conditions,” he said.
Three years later that truck is still a strong performer in our rental fleet,” he said.
“We’ve got Scanias operating around Kambalda in the Goldfields and they’re working in water that is seven times saltier than seawater, so it’s an extremely corrosive site, but the Scanias have stood up pretty well to that, as well,” he said.
“Scania also does really well is the bodybuilder interface and I don’t believe there are many OEMs that offer this type of bodybuilder interface, and this keeps us out of the cab, from a wiring perspective, when we are fitting safety features like door alarms and park brake alarms and lights,” Wells said.
“It makes the truck more reliable because no one’s hacking into the wiring here and there looking for power, you just do it through one position,” he said.
“Our Scania 8x4s work around the clock every day of the year, so uptime is important to us because we do a dry hire model, so we are responsible for various aspects of downtime,” Wells said.
“We always want to support our customers regardless of where they are working so we will send service guys to site when they are needed,” said Wells.
Scania’s mining account manager based in Western Australia, Arron Ebsworth said that Premium Plant Hire operates Scanias in some of the most testing terrain and conditions in probably the entire world.
“It is a tribute to the underlying strength of the Scania product and its engineering, and our decades of mining operations experience globally that our trucks just eat up WA mining operations,” said Arron Ebsworth.
“We are looking forward to deploying the Scania P 280 4×4 XT as a water cart in the Premium Plant Hire fleet as we are confident it will be able to deliver exactly what his clients need in terms of reliability, accessibility and strength, not to mention high levels of driver comfort and safety,” Ebsworth said.
“All mines rely on service vehicles that can be trusted to work around the clock and keep the operation running, and the Scania 4×4 is just another one of our many configurations that will do the job all day, every day,” he said.
