UD Trucks back in bus business

The arrival of the Croner Bus marks UD Trucks Southern Africa’s return to South Africa’s commuter bus industry for the first time since 2017. CLARE PETRA MATTHES attended the Croner Bus launch in KwaZulu-Natal.

The development and launch of the UD Croner Buses have been on the cards since 2019. Covid-19 threw a spanner in the works, however, causing an unwelcome delay.

UD Trucks has been producing trucks in Southern Africa for more than 60 years at its Rosslyn manufacturing facility. In the 1970s the manufacturer started producing buses, introducing the CB20 model followed by the CB30 in the 1980s. The UD60 and UD100, meanwhile, made it to market in the 1990s.

A few decades later, the 2023 launch was held at The Capital Zimbali in KwaZulu-Natal in May. This saw three new variations of the UD Croner Bus revealed: the Croner Bus PKE 280, and the Croner Bus LKE 210 and
LKE 240. These buses are specifically aimed at Southern Africa and address the passenger experience while furnishing the African market with much-needed alternatives.

“We have a clear purpose at UD Trucks and that’s called ‘Better Life’, but in tandem with ‘Better Life’, we strive to be the Japanese sustainability leader come 2025,” says Jacques Michel, senior vice president of UD Trucks international sales.

“The bus industry has changed drastically,” he adds. “The focus is on the comfort of the passengers but also on sustainable solutions. This range of Croner buses is a complete range of products for a defined purpose with all the different applications, but it is also an economical solution.”

The Croner buses hope to fulfil the needs of “something intermediate”, notes Rory Schultz, UD Trucks Southern Africa sales director. “There’s the luxury bus market, while public transportation is also done within the minibus taxi industry,” he points out. For this reason, UD plans to not only serve commuters in the public sector but also, for instance, communities that privately provide buses from a schooling perspective and corporations creating a transportation system to get employees to and from work.

Transport post-Covid has been one of the more resilient sectors in South Africa and trucks have continuously been put to work, says Schultz. “We have a solution, in spite of the challenges that we’ve had from Covid, and then the consequential supply chain challenges. It’s called tenacity,” he stresses. “We need to do what we can to say, ‘here’s a solution’, and make sure we can bring a little bit of what we’ve learned from the ruggedness or resilience of the transport market [to this market].”

“What we’ve tried to do is supply a solution which is efficient, will be sustainable, and is profitable for the customers,” Michel elaborates, asserting that there is demand on the African continent to make sure that the current transport solution can be improved.

Filip Van den Heede, managing director of UD Trucks Southern Africa, says the UD PKE and LKE buses adopt the same architecture as the South African medium-duty UD Croner truck to ensure quality, durability, and class-leading fuel consumption.