Hino South Africa has been rated the leading brand in the overall local truck market for the third successive year. This was announced at PMR Africa magazine’s annual awards function held in Johannesburg recently.

The survey was conducted by means of telephonic interviews with a random national sample of 180 respondents from January to March 2012. Those interviewed included fleet owners, fleet managers, fleet controllers and transport managers in the private and public sectors, as well as trucking journalists.
The respondents rated the various commercial vehicle manufacturers and distributors across 28 attributes that covered the vehicles as well as after-market service. The people interviewed were also asked to list the make, as well as type and number of vehicles they operated in their own fleets.

The results were based on perceptions of the respondents and each attribute was rated from 1 to 5. Hino scored an average of 4.27 points in the combined category (trucks above and below 10 t) and was rewarded with a Diamond Arrow Award.

Hino also came out top in the category for trucks below 10 t with its 300 Series and Dyna range, scoring an average of 4.23 points and qualifying for another Diamond Arrow. The brand was rated third in the large truck category with an average score of 4.21 and qualified for a Silver Arrow.

“We are delighted to have come out top in the combined results for the third year running in this wide-ranging independent research by a company with many years’ of experience in this sphere of marketing,” commented Dr Casper Kruger, Hino South Africa vice president.

“The strong support for the Hino brand in all its aspects is indicative of our success in terms of selling top-class products and then looking after our customers. Obviously our reputation has spread beyond operators of Hino trucks to ensure such a positive response.

“We were also very pleased to see that in virtually all the attributes researched Hino not only scored higher than the industry average in almost every case, but in most instances Hino showed an improvement over the ratings in 2011,” added Kruger.

Last year Hino scored 4.15 in the combined results, 4.24 in the under 10 t category and 4.12 in the over 10 t segment.