Industry support drives Truck Test 2026 to greater heights

When the country’s leading transport and logistics bodies put their names behind an event, it shows that the industry sees real value at stake. That’s precisely the case with Truck Test 2026, the largest and most significant extra-heavy commercial vehicle comparison event ever staged in South Africa.

The Road Freight Association (RFA), the Southern African Association of Freight Forwarders (SAAFF), the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport South Africa (CILTSA), the Transist Bureau, the Federation of East and Southern Africa Road Transport Associations (FESARTA), the African Union of Transportation and Logistics Organizations (UAOTL), and supply chain body SAPICS have all thrown their support behind the event organised by FOCUS on Transport & Logistics magazine. Their backing reflects a shared understanding across the industry – that as fuel costs climb and margins tighten, operators need trustworthy, independent data to guide multimillion-rand fleet decisions. Truck Test is where that data comes from.

That confidence extends into the event’s commercial partnerships. Engen joins as fuel and lubrication partner, Afrit as trailer partner, TruckScience as technical partner, Bandag as tyre partner, ZF as aftermarket partner and Ctrack as telematics partner, while WearCheck partners to deliver condition monitoring through oil analysis.

Twenty trucks from the world’s foremost manufacturers will go head-to-head, among them Daewoo, DAF, FAW, Foton, Hino, Iveco, MAN, Mercedes-Benz, Powerstar, Scania, Shacman, Sinotruk and Volvo Trucks. Each will be pushed through identical, real-world conditions to generate the event’s signature productivity index: a composite score of fuel consumption against average speed that tells operators in concrete terms how much work a truck delivers per litre of fuel.

It’s this insistence on standardisation that gives the industry confidence in Truck Test’s results. All trucks face the same route, conditions and scrutiny – removing the variables of trailer configuration or testing environment that can otherwise cloud a fair comparison. Operators are left with data on which they can act, rather than marketing claims they must take on faith. 

Set to run from 10 to 12 November, this year’s edition is the most ambitious in the event’s history. The N3 route between Johannesburg and Durban is chosen to mirror the daily realities of South African trucking – highway stretches, secondary roads and demanding gradients included. Because the testing happens in real-world conditions, the results carry credibility that matters more than ever before.

With fuel prices under sustained pressure and operators searching for every efficiency gain they can find, the case for independent, comparable performance data has moved from useful to essential. In a sector where a single purchasing decision can run into millions of rand, the backing Truck Test 2026 has secured from the industry isn’t just an endorsement – it’s a vote of confidence in the only benchmark of its kind on the continent.