Road Transport, Coach, Taxi Owners

Fred Carah, Managing Director, Sunstate Charters, Brisbane, Queensland. Tel: 07 3868 2400

   Sunstate Charters runs a fleet of interstate coaches and has been operating since about 1985. In 1993-‘94 we were operating an older fleet of Mercedes, Volvo and GM coaches. At that time the mileage was creeping up on them and we were looking for an oil that would give us prolonged life on some of our engines, when someone recommended PM oil to us. The man we spoke with was Keith Kelley and he sold us some oil for testing in our coaches.

   After some tests and runs, we found that we got better oil mileage and it also improved our fuel mileage a little. By changing to PM oil, it gave us the extra 200,000 to 300,000 km we required from our older fleet of coaches. Since then, we have replaced most of the fleet with new Volvo and Mercedes coaches.

   We are still using PM oil with great satisfaction. We have found that a good percentage of the excellent fuel consumption we get with the new coaches can be attributed to the PM oil we use.

   With PM oils, we have extended our oil drains from 20,000 klms to 60,000 klms, which saves the company quite a lot of money in labour and oil. This has been a great saving to the company. We ran some out to 99,000 klms as a test, but I come from the old school and I can’t see any point in going that far. At 60,000 the oil doesn’t owe us anything, so we just make 60,00 our change point, because, by monitoring with a Lubri-Sensor, we know the oil is still good and doing its job quite satisfactorily in all circumstances.

Wes Connerly, Oakdare Holdings, Mossman, Far North Queensland. Tel: 07 4098 4044

   We are a transport company with 13 prime movers and we’ve been using PM oils since about 1994-5 in most of our fleet. We use it exclusively in the diffs and gearboxes and we’ve had extremely good results to date. We are currently trialing the engine oil and we’re just monitoring the results to see how it goes. To any future users of PM, I would highly recommend PM products, especially in your transmissions and diffs.

   We pull double and triple trailers with cane and cattle all around and across the top end and Gulf country of north Queensland with up to 170 tonnes. We’ve found that, since using PM products, we’ve greatly decreased the diff and gearbox temperatures in all the units.

   This is especially so in the prime movers pulling road trains throughout north Queensland, which are down by 20 or more degrees lower. We were running at 110 degrees plus and now we are down to around 90 degrees, which is a big difference. We are also having extremely good results with increased oil change intervals, which is a big saving to our company.

Barry Rothery, Rothery’s Coaches, Rockhampton, Queensland.
Tel: 07 4922 4320

   We operate coaches locally in Rockhampton and interstate, and we’ve been using PM oil in our coaches now since about 1996. We use the PM oil in our motors and drive trains. We recently ran a Mercedes coach out to 100,000 kilometres on one oil change without any problems. We tested the oil and it was still OK at 100,00 klms, but we changed it anyway – it didn’t owe us anything.

   We have another coach that has just been tested at 80,000klms, and the oil is still OK. It will do 100,000klm between oil changes no problem. We’ve also converted three of our GM motors over to PM, and we are averaging about 50,000klm to an oil change. Previously we had to change the GM’s oil every 10,000klm. I thoroughly recommend PM oil.

Les Marshall, Enoggera Taxi’s, Brisbane, Queensland.

   I first started using PM oil in about 1988. I use it in my racing cars, and started using it in my taxi fleet in about 1995. I operate 25 taxis - we change the oil in the taxi’s every 30,000 klms and the filters every 10,000 klms. We’ve had a very good run out of it and I’d say it has definitely kept my service costs down. We’ve had no mechanical failure at all since we’ve been using PM oil, and I feel it is a very good product.

   I have used it in my race cars for approximately ten years, and I have very high regard for the PM product. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who owns or races cars.