On the 75th anniversary of Freighter, we talk to Ken Easter, founder and MD of KS Easter, one of Brisbane’s most well-respected road transport businesses. Running a fleet of nearly 200 Freighter trailers, Ken shares his experience with the brand and trust in its quality products.
One of the things that KS Easter Managing Director Ken Easter believes in is having a quality fleet to run his transport business. Ken’s fleet of roughly 240 trailers runs across most of the Australian east coast, South Australia and Melbourne, delivering time-sensitive freight.
Ken started his work life as an owner-driver around 44 years ago in Newcastle before moving base to sunny Brisbane in 1988. “It is a family-run business. My older son Kenny Easter is the General Manager, and his wife Karlie Easter is the Compliance Manager, while my younger son Mathew Easter is the Paymaster,” Ken says.
“We have roughly 240 trailers and a considerable number of those are Freighter. Our oldest Freighter trailer is around 20 years old. This year, we are adding twelve new B-doubles to our fleet and we have already taken delivery of a number of those. The new ones are similar to many of our older trailers – curtain-sided drop decks with SafeADJUST Mezz Decks. Our customers love them because adjusting the floors on these trailers is no longer a labour-intensive task.”
Ken says what has made him stick with Freighter all these years is the quality of the trailers and the customer service experience his team gets from local Freighter Dealer, Trailer Sales.
“Their quality of product is great. They are easy to do business with. We have a similar desire for excellence and good service. Over the years there have hardly been any complaints with their products. They have been very, very helpful,” he says.
It’s a relationship between two companies that works both ways, Ken says. “We’ve had some intricate custom design specifications that have been done for us. We’ve had curtain-siders with mezzanine floors, full-height gates and other details for retaining specialised products. Freighter has been happy to comply with these design requirements. On the other hand, we have assisted them with testing on some of their new products so it works both ways.”
Although KS Easter manages most of its service at its depots, it has a dedicated fleet running between Sydney and Melbourne and some of the service of those vehicles is looked after by MaxiTRANS.
“They have been very good to us. The fact that they can help us out with service nationally is a big bonus for us. We do a lot of service work with them in Melbourne and Sydney,” Ken says
“We are quite proud to be associated with Freighter’s anniversary. It’s a very good partnership,” Ken says. “We are hoping to grow our business further this year and hopefully that will create more demand for trailers so we’re optimistic about our future.”
