Richards Bay-based US car import and sales company US Trucks aims to estab- lish its second service centre in Gauteng, which is a market that represents nearly 80% of the company’s sales, US Trucks partner Thinus de Beer tells Engineering News.

The new service centre will be located in Silver Lakes, Pretoria, and will be the third US Trucks service centre, including the centres in Richards Bay and Roodepoort.

US Trucks imports Dodge Ram trucks from the US and converts them from left-hand to right-hand drive for sale on the South African market. It has been illegal to drive a left-hand-drive vehicle in South Africa, since 2000.

“We strip the trucks’ interior, as we have to get to the ‘bare bones’ of the vehicle to swop all the electrical wiring. A lot of people do not realise that the electrical modules for the seats and doors also have to be changed around. This includes the switches for the electric windows and the mirrors, which are all tied up in wiring on the vehicle’s floor, which is known as a floor loom. There is also wiring in the roof, so we have to remove the roof lining as well,” De Beer explains.

He notes that the seats cannot simply be swopped, as they are equipped with airbags. The airbags of the imported Dodge Ram open outwards, towards the doors; therefore, the seats must be reinstalled in their original position to prevent the airbags from being deployed inwards, on the wrong side of the passengers.

Further items that have to be replaced include the air-conditioning system, which requires that a new unit be manufactured; the seatbelts, which are replaced with South African-made units; and the dashboard frame, which also has to be swopped around. Part of the dashboard is manufactured in South Africa, but the bulk of the dashboard is original, which is cut and reassembled. Once it is reassembled, it is covered in leather and installed.

“To the average person, it will be difficult to see what has been done. The trick is to make sure the part manufactured in South Africa is correct and that all the leather covering and stitching look exactly as the original.

“There are also mechanical changes, such as the link to the steering system, that also have to be changed around. We use premanufactured, heavy-duty steering linkage systems, which employ a combination of angle boxes and shafts that are imported from the US,” De Beer highlights.

He adds that US Trucks sometimes uses a new steering rack system, which is common on vehicles of US automotive manufacturer Jeep.

The conversion from left-hand to right-hand drive takes between seven and nine working days, after which the vehicles undergo a rigorous quality-control process to ensure that the work is South African Bureau of Standards- and National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications-compliant.

US Trucks supplies a warranty on its vehicles. It is important for the company to ensure that customers do not encounter problems when driving their trucks.

“The biggest challenge we face is quality control. It could cost a lot of money for a company like ours if the trucks break down in areas where we have no presence. We are a small company, with only 18 employees working on conversions, so quality control is vital to our success.

US Trucks has, therefore, established service centres across South Africa, or business relationships with other companies that are aware of the company’s work and can help US Trucks customers with vehicle-related problems.

Meanwhile, De Beer notes that US Trucks has acquired the necessary technology and skills for vehicle conversions from companies in Australia. “We had to acquire entire conversion processes and understand what we needed to do with the dashboards, air conditioning and wiring. When we first started selling converted trucks in 2006, we were buying dashboards from Australia. Since then, we have completed high volumes of converted trucks, and when the new Dodge Ram model came out in 2009, we sold a completed conversion to the Australians. By the time they started converting the new model, we had completed about 20 models,” he asserts.

De Beer explains that US Trucks develops the technology in advance to stay ahead of the competition by securing new models as soon as possible so that the company can put them on the South African market.

Since the company started selling converted trucks, it has sold more than 200 units, and even exported vehicles to Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Zambia.

US Trucks converts a minimum of three to four units a month. “We have a two- to three-month waiting list of customers, which is quite convenient, as this helps determine lead times for sourcing the truck and importing it from the US so that we can complete the conversion in time for customers,” De Beer says.

He notes that US Trucks has done conversion work on Ford F250 trucks, but has chosen to specialise in Dodge Ram trucks.

“All sorts of tooling need to be bought to access the computer system and clear the codes on a vehicle. If you start conversion work on a different brand, you have to retool everything, which does not enable you to specialise on a product and sell many units. We realised that, if we wanted to be successful, we had to stick to one product,” De Beer concludes.