DAF’S DISCREET DEVELOPMENT
SINCE NOVEMBER 2018, the general manager of DAF Trucks Australia has been an affable executive from Spain named Felipe Rubio.
To perhaps state the obvious, it doesn’t take long in his agreeable and educated company to realise he is neither a typical, nor traditional, Paccar man. At least, not in the Australian context.
Here, a tried and true Paccar man is generally someone who lives and breathes Kenworth. Someone burnt to the bone with the KW ‘bug’ and who, for much of the past two decades since DAF first became part of Paccar Australia’s portfolio, has benignly endured rather than boldly embraced the Dutch truck.
But as the emergence of executives such as Felipe hints, bug-brained Paccar purists are a diminishing breed as the tide turns and a new reality continues to gain momentum. A reality revolving around an increasingly stark acceptance that times are a’changing and whether the bug brethren likes it or not, DAF’s growth potential far exceeds Kenworth’s.
Sure, it might be like trying to turn a container ship with a ‘tinnie’ but given persistence and the right conditions, there will come a change in direction. And at Paccar Australia it’s happening right now, with more energy, optimism and apparent commitment than ever before.
None of this is to infer or foolishly predict that Kenworth won’t continue to reign supreme. Far from it. Paccar principals are much too clever and the Kenworth brand too respected and deeply ingrained in the market’s mindset for such cataclysmic upheaval to occur in just one or two generations. Besides, in the coldly calculating commercial world, it is fundamentally easier and almost certainly more profitable to sell a Kenworth than a
