Hino South Africa has cut the retail selling prices of all its replacement parts by 4% from the beginning of May as a contribution to assisting fleet owners to lower operating costs. Stable parts supply is critical to truck operators in controlling costs as downtime due to a lack of the correct part is very costly and Hino has been very efficient in this aspect of its after-sales operations.

“We realise if we can lower the cost of parts while maintaining our excellent supply rate this will be a real win-win for our Hino customers, so therefore we are able to take this price-cutting initiative, which is made possible by improved efficiencies in all aspects of our parts operation,” explained Sudesh Sanilall, Senior Manager: Aftersales of Hino SA.

“We certainly don’t want to jeopardise the excellent score of 96% or more we have received consistently for parts supply in the quarterly Scott Byers Comparative Customer Experience survey and we are sure this aspect will not suffer.

“We have an ongoing focus on improving operating costs and CPK (cost per kilometre) management or life cycle cost, as it is known these days. This drove our decision to lower parts prices across the board this year. This move is also in line with Hino’s successful global Total Support strategy where one of the pillars is increasing uptime by decreasing downtime and reducing the cost of ownership for Hino customers,” added Sanilall.

Hino Total Support encompasses everything involved with buying and operating a Hino truck by building and then strengthening a strong and close relationship between Hino Motors of Japan, Hino South Africa, its dealers, suppliers, and customers.

“We believe that this price reduction will be well accepted by our customers and will re-affirm our business partnership with them,” added Sanilall. “This strategy will also increase service and maintenance business at our dealer network, as the price reduction is coupled to a one year-over-the-counter parts warranty and a two-year warranty on parts that are purchased and fitted at a Hino dealership.”