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| An Interview by 'Sejahtera' |
| January, 2005 |
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 The Lee Ting San Group is one of the relative
newcomers to container haulage. Based in Prai,
in northern Malaysia, LTS is the heritage
bequeathed by the late Lee Ting San to his son
and daughters. The company's founder worked with
his own truck until he formed the Lee Ting San
Lorry Agency in 1974, based on the concept of
secure deliveries on time, every time. When the
company founder died suddenly in 2003, his
family was already well experienced in the LTS
operations.
Today, LTS is run by Lee Kah Chye and his three
sisters, in conjunction with an expanding
management team and a growing number of office,
depot and driving staff.
 LTS was already on a growth path, thanks to
burgeoning electronics business, when the
Commercial Vehicle Licensing Board issued new
container haulage licences in 2000. LTS was
quick to take up the challenge and was soon
evaluating different brands of trucks to handle
this demanding new task.
We soon found out that Volvo's aims were the
same as ours - to guarantee reliability,
productivity and maximum uptime," said Lee Kah
Chye.
"Volvo was also most helpful with finance when
the company needed to grow very quickly. Now
that LTS is the number one haulage company in
northern Malaysia we haven't forgotten that
assistance. Not that it's been difficult
decision to continue buying Volvos, because
we've tested them against other brands and have
found that the Volvos cost us less and cause us
less trouble."
"We buy new Volvos for our heavy haulage work,
but we also buy used ones for less demanding
jobs. We normally have two drivers for each
truck, so the trucks can work around the clock,
and we have a pool of backup drivers."
"Our drivers love their Volvos," said Lee Kah
Chye. LTS has its own workshop, with six
mechanics and two breakdown units, but the
compnay is checking out Volvo's service contract
deal for it future container trucks.
Volvo's local branch manager, D.Pathmanaban
(Nathan), and his adminstration manager, Adam,
are in regular contact with the LTS Group.
"Our plan is to sell the next batch of Volvos to
LTS with service contracts and we're in a great
position to look after their maintenance," said
Nathan.
"We've already got 120 trucks in our area on
service contracts and at Kontena Nasional's
depot, where they're operating more than 50
Volvos, we have workshop space that we staff
with two mechanics and an apprentice," said
Nathan.
"We've adopted a clean-sheet-of-paper approach
to training and keeping mechanics," said Adam.
"We've had excellent results by recruiting
technical school leavers and training them -
none of our school-leaver mechanic graduates
have left the company," said Adam.
(Source : Volvo Malaysia Quarterly Magazine) |
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