Berle Transport purchased its first new trailer from Fibreglass Transport Equipment (FTE) in 1992, and to this day the company still hasn’t purchased elsewhere.
After experiencing growth throughout the business shortly after its inception, the decision to become a refrigerationfocused company was made in 1986, which also aligned its path with the JOST product – and what would follow a series of fridge vans fitted with the OEM product. 
“Basically everything in the yard is from JOST,” says Berle Transport Managing Director, Darren Berle. “From the turntables on the trucks to the kingpins in the trailers, to the landing legs, they’re all JOST.”
Darren took over from his father in 2010 with his brother-in-law, and together they were responsible for the fleet’s growth from a 15 to 20 truck-operation to 45 combinations within three years. But, as Darren says, it wouldn’t be possible without FTE manufacturing the entire fleet.
“I’m probably one of FTE’s only customers that hasn’t bought another brand of trailer,” he says. “We prefer the FTEs on our own personal level and preference, and the quality, refrigeration capacity and their thermal value is above and beyond. On the downside, if they fall over, I can pick them back up and repair them as they are built to be more durable as well.”
With every trailer order Darren has intentionally specified JOST products due to their well-known reliability and high quality. This has also come to hand with FTE, as they have an established and close relationship with JOST for almost three decades. 
“We’ve always relied on our long-term relationships with our clients, and in turn we’ve worked with JOST and established our own long-term relationships, which is what we’ve found today with clients, they keep coming back,” says FTE National Sales Manager, Jason Cunningham. “I’ve been at this business for coming up to 28 years, and JOST has been a part of it since then.”
According to Darren, by choosing JOST for all of Berle Transport’s truck and trailer applications, the fleet has been able to gain ground on productivity.
“We’ve stuck with them, we’ve found them to be preferable to our application,” Darren says. “The strength of the landing legs and the rigidity and maintenance is all good for us. There’s low maintenance on them, we’ve never had any great failures, so we’ve just stuck with it.
“We’ve used other makes of the landing legs in the past as well, and they all seemed to be a bit weak,” he continues. “JOST just has that strength – we do a lot of dropping and swapping and quick hitching B-doubles. For service ability and life maintenance, the JOST equipment suits us.” 
Through the countless dealings with JOST, Darren has been able to establish a direct relationship with the company which has ultimately benefitted the fleet in the long run. Although Berle Transport now orders its parts through a dealership in Sydney, Darren says if there’s ever a question, he can count on JOST to deal with him directly. “With the B-doubles, the quick hitching turntables take a beating and yet they’ve still worked well for me over the years since I’ve been in a controlling position in the transport company and prior to that with my father. He probably didn’t have them on as large of a scale as we do now, but now pretty much everything in the yard is from JOST.”
With JOST and FTE working side-byside for the industry, fleets like Berle Transport are given much flexibility in their truck and trailer applications to truly take full advantage of what two quality manufacturers have to offer.
“It’s a personal choice, but in experience the products that we’ve chosen suit us for a reason, because they’re either serviceable or they’ve got the strength we need, the reliability and so on,” Darren says. “The product is the top of the range and is relatively sought after in the market, and the reliability is as far as I’m concerned as good as I’m going to get.”
This article was published in Trailer Magazine Feb 2023 edition. Trailer Magazine is Australia’s leading B2B publication dedicated to trailers, truck bodies and ancillary equipment. For the latest editorial and news about road transport in Australia, see Trailer Magazine.
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