FAW Harrismith dealer ‘bats a century’

Literally ‘hitting it out of the park’, one of FAW’s dealers scored a century when he delivered his team’s 100th FAW truck sold – a first among FAW’s Southern African representatives to sell this many units through a single FAW franchised dealership.

Jianyu Hao, CEO of FAW Vehicle Manufacturers (Pty) Ltd South Africa, says this exceptional sales milestone by a single dealer marks an evolution among the FAW representatives across southern Africa.

“Our representative sales and service dealers are passionate about our brand and are certainly advancing their skills, knowledge and ability to compete with other established commercial vehicle retailers. We thank the customer, VKB, for their faith in the brand and congratulate the dealership team for exceptional resilience in a tough market and their commitment to excellent customer service,” says Hao.

Juan Wiggill, dealer principle at FAW Harrismith, credits his entire 26-person staff complement with the achievement. “We all have a passion for the brand and are dedicated to customer services, whether on the sales or the after-sales service and maintenance side. Whatever our team of staff do, they know exactly what to do, how best to do it and always display friendliness and express interest in every customer’s business. The key asset to any good dealership is good, well-trained, right-attitude staff,” he says.

Good teams of people are mostly led by a disciplined and fair leader and Juan Wiggill himself has a friendly demeanour but is uncompromising on cost and quality control, with all the checks and balances followed to the ‘T’. This is especially so with workshop activities. His best cost-control philosophy is to do the job right first time and never waste – neither time nor materials. It is for this very reason that VKB chose to purchase their latest FAW fleet addition, a FAW 28.380FT from Wiggill.

Bryan Boshoff, logistics manager of VKB, says that not only are their FAW vehicles giving them good fuel consumption figures but are also lowering total cost of operations.

More importantly, Boshoff praises the FAW Harrismith dealership for providing VKB exceptional service, maintenance and parts support for their whole FAW fleet, which includes the FAW 7.130 (4-ton), the newer FAW 8.140 (5-ton) and a number of FAW 28.330 (13.5-ton) units.

Boshoff adds: “This is an outstanding transport partner and Juan Wiggill had gone ‘over and above’ expectations, especially when he loaned me a FAW truck while mine was in for repair so that I’d have no downtime on my own transport contracts.”

VKB has a fleet of 60 trucks and 400 LCVs to deliver general goods, flour and fertilizer, among others, across the entire country. “Downtime is a critical element when it comes to my own service delivery so it’s great to have a truck partner who understands this and the effect it has on my business,” says Boshoff.

FAW Harrismith was awarded Best FAW Dealer of the Year Award in 2014.

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