Manila, 21 April 2017—Market leader Isuzu Philippines Corporation (IPC) kicked off their annual Truck Fest at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City yesterday, this year putting the spotlight squarely on the work of long time body building partners including Almazora Motors Corporation, Kyoei Kogyo Philippines Corporation (KPC) and Centro Manufacturing Corporation. Launched at the event which runs from April 20 to 23—taking center-stage and, in fact, configured as the event’s elevated stage—was Isuzu’s FVM top medium-duty truck with the new Nippon-Freuhauf wing van body that’s now license-built here by Centro.

Isuzu has been the top truck brand in the Philippines for 17 consecutive years, with 36% growth last year showing them continuing their gains in 2015 when they finally topped the heavy-duty tractor heads segment as well. Now, with IPC highlighting the quality and diversity of applications built on their solid-frame truck chassis, the company seems prepared to defend their leadership in detail and across all categories, from light- to heavy-duty haulers.

IPC marketing head Joseph Bautista said that wing van bodies have wide and surprising applications here with some being used as mobile showrooms in the countryside by appliance retailers, and that the newly launched Nippon-Freuhauf wing van body for the Isuzu FVM is built to the same specs as those fitted out on trucks for the Japanese domestic market. The rear body engineered by pioneering wing van manufacturer Nippon-Freuhauf of Japan, and built under license by Centro at their Bulacan factory, is constructed with light yet high-grade aluminum and features hydraulically operated wing sections that open up at the touch of a button.  The hydraulic actuators for the wing sections are tested to withstand over 20,000 operating cycles, said Centro senior sales manager Vic del Rosario.

Mr. del Rosario pointed to cargo loading/unloading efficiency as being the reason that among the ubiquitous surplus trucks on the country’s transport grid, the Land Transport and Franchising Board (LTFRB) estimates that 300,000 are outfitted with wing van bodies. He further said that among these surplus wing van trucks, the LTFRB reports that around 90,000 are over 15 years old and that 3,000 have already failed to have their franchises renewed under the government’s initiative to effect the replacement of trucks that have reached that 15-year age limit. Centro’s production of wing-van bodies starts today and these counts in terms of truck units and lifespans give context to their major undertaking to build these bodies for Isuzu on a 50-units per month assembly line laid out to Nippon-Freuhauf specifications.

Isabela is the country’s second biggest grower of rice, the biggest of commercial corn that’s used for feeding livestock.  And the province that’s landlocked by rough coasts beaten by Pacific Ocean weather needs to truck their millions of tons of staple grain the hundreds of kilometers to exit the fertile Cagayan Valley.  No surprise that it was there, just last week, that Isuzu hosted their first ever Truck School session outside Metro Manila.  On March 21 and 22 in Aurora City, the country’s top truck-maker trained scores of drivers of their fleet operator customers from Isabela and Cagayan, trained them on keeping their top-of-the-line EXZ tractor heads in good and efficient operation.

Dubbed the Hybrid Rice Champion of the country,  Isabela grows dwarf rice–a breed engineered to have shorter stalks, requiring less resources to bring to maturity than conventional rice, and making these more hardy against wind and storm. Their crops are of such quantities that farmers contract out the gathering of these to small mechanized harvesters that can each process 50 cavans a a day.

The 1.3 million tons of rice that Isabela produces each year amounts to 224 percent of the province’s consumption, with the surplus production being trucked through Dalton Pass in Nueva Vizcaya on through Nueva Ecija and to Metro Manila and points further south. The very definition of long haul missions, these hundred-kilometer trips through countless towns and high mountain passes take two days each way.  And, like super-tankers carrying other basic commodities, its heavy lift tractor trailers that are the most efficient rice haulers, each pulling 30 to 40 tons of payload.

Coming from the biggest truck brand in the country, by the sheer number of modern new haulers they have on the nation’s transport grid, Isuzu Philippines’ new truck school brings us the closest thing to third-party certifications for big-rig Category V drivers.

Isuzu Philippines Corporation (IPC) had been doing on-site seminars for client companies, training fleet drivers in efficiently operating their trucks’ industrial-grade powertrains but only in the mode of typical after-sales services that are offered by other big brands as well.  But since last year, Isuzu had been organizing regularly scheduled classes at common facilities that are attended by drivers from numerous fleet customers.

The class we observed last November was held at the Honda Safety Driving Center (HSDC) in Paranaque City, and was on the handling of the advanced MJX16 16-speed gearbox offered as an option on Isuzu’s top-spec CYH solid-frame truck and as a standard feature on their EXZ top-end tractor rig.

Karate chop into fifth

On the advanced MJX16, the design of the gearshift permits intuitive access to those 16 speeds but it does take some clear explanation and solid practice to get drivers to the point that they don’t feel compelled to their eyes off the road and eyeball their stick work.  Think about it, even if those numerous speeds were implemented as eight notches on the stick-shift with two final ratios, a low and a high one, multiplying these into the required 16, it’d be a constantly daunting task to slot things into the intended gear. If it were left up to a simple crowding of gears onto two side-by-side H arrangements, any driver would balk at not looking down and somehow making sure he’s pulling the the stick down into 4^th and not 6^th, or even 8^th gear.

Isuzu’s elegant solution (explained first in the classroom with nomenclature charts that really brought home how they intended to drill these details into the troops) is this firm détente between gears 1 to 4 and 5 to 7.  After launching the truck, up-shifts to fourth gear follow the typical pattern burned into every driver’s muscle memory—straight down into 2^nd, up-right-up for 3^rd, straight down again for 4^th.

To cross over into the higher range, you then give the stick a firm shove to the right (the instructor they have over from Japan likes calling it a “Karate chop”). This puts the stick in high range mode, toggling that old natural H pattern into accessing gears 5 to 8. There’s no pull to look down at the stick since that shove/chop makes this H arrangement separate from that for gears 1 to 4. Down shifting from 5^th to 4^th speed, crossing back down from high to low range is just as intuitive—shove/chop the stick left to toggle her back into the lower range then slot the stick into the upper right channel.

Gentle rungs on the shift ladder

Actual gear-shifting is done electronically, by wire, despite the meaty feel of these shifts, and this is most apparent with how Low and High final ratios (those two settings that multiply the 8 speeds into 16) are toggled with a splitter switch down the front of the stick. You can leave the switch in either mode but toggling between the two in a detailed shift ladder (low to high 1^st then low to high 2^nd and so on) delivers the close ratios you’d need when easing a heavy load up to cruising speed.  You toggle that splitter with the stick in neutral before putting things back in gear.  A gentle climb through all available ratios from launch would go like this …

• 1^st low: with the stick in neutral set the splitter to low, press down on the clutch pedal, slot the stick into 1^st gear for roll out
• 1^st high: bring the stick back into neutral (press down on the clutch pedal, bring the stick into neutral, step off the clutch pedal), toggle the splitter into high, step back on the clutch, slot the stick back into 1^st gear
• 2^nd low: bring the stick back into neutral, toggle the splitter into low, step back on the clutch, slot the stick down into 2^nd gear
• 2^nd high: bring the stick back into neutral, toggle the splitter into high, step back on the clutch, sloth the stick back down into 2^nd

… and so on, you get the picture.

The shift sequence traversing all available speeds does add some significant steps to the process but these describe sub-routines in the algorithm that can be quickly burned into new muscle memory.

When using those speeds to create drag for decelerating, Isuzu’s advanced powertrains also feature engine-induced braking in two stages. There’s the typical engine braking that goes on with the engine idled while being pushed against by the roadwheels through a lower gear, and there’s the additional drag that’s available with exhaust braking where un-combusted gases are funnelled down before exiting the cylinders and made to put more resistant pressure on the reciprocating pistons.  So, interspersed with those downshifts through all the speeds, through both high and low ratios of each gear, the driver has the option to tweak each stage’s braking potential.

Groundbreaking but also pragmatic

Having typically come up through the ranks from light and medium-duty trucks, it’s not surprising that most drivers use only a fraction of these new-fangled controls. They usually settle for a small sub-set of features, thereby handicapping themselves when trying to obey mandates, if any, to keep the engines turning in optimal RPM ranges while doing long and/or heavy hauling.   Isuzu’s truck school offers them a chance to break the mold and drive advanced equipment with new competencies.

IPC president Hajime Koso explained that their initiative is in direct response to the dramatic growth they’ve experienced since 2015. In that year, Koso’s move to invest in ready ex-stock inventories even of Isuzu’s big C and E series trucks resulted in triple digit growth that got the truck maker the top position in all segments for the first time, leading the industry with their mainstay light- and medium-duty haulers and now also with their heavy-duty solid-frame and tractor-head trucks.

Truck school convened again last December to finish out the year with six sessions and, this month, Isuzu will bring it along with a truck fest exhibit to Isabela in Northern Luzon.  This is in line with what Koso described as their strong push to bring their products and expertise out into the countryside, with IPC asking its dealers to help specify and organize similar activities for the Visayas and Mindanao regions as well.

This progression to common classes for their fleet customers, the first in the country, is as pragmatic as it is groundbreaking … it’s simply them doing their part to make sure their multitude of fleet customers, and many new clients, do get what they expected when they chose Isuzu.  And, with truck school and its certificate courses being the creation of the country’s biggest truck-maker, well, it’s easy to see how this harks back to when big brands like IBM and Boeing had themselves created instruction programs for their complex products, programs that were eventually mainstreamed into courses from independent, third-party institutions.  Would that these developments lead to similar evolutions.