King of Bull Bars: inside King Bars

Original photography from the ACT archive

King Bars has strengthened its brand with a new product range and a new NSW agent, the A & I Autogroup. Australian Custom Trucks talks to the King Bars team about its company, new products and growth strategy.

Queensland based specialist heavy vehicle bullbar supplier King Bars has capitalised on the slowdown in the market to take the time to invest in the most research and development it has ever done to create a new range of products which opens the company up to new markets.

Helping lift the company’s profile is being on the front of Australia’s most iconic show trucks including two variations of the RM Williams Longhorn Express and the two Aussie 1 Western Star variations as well as featuring prominently on the 50th Anniversary edition Mack Titan and Super Liner vehicles.

The popularity of the brand has also been enhanced by being on Heavy Haulage Australia’s (HHA) extremely well customised fleet and with industry personality Jon Kelly in the spotlight with his television show Mega Truckers and his massive Facebook following, the result is even more exposure for the King Bars brand.

Jon Kelly is one of the challenging customers because, “he wants what he wants,” says King Bars Managing Director Martin Nye.

Another recent challenging job was done for Clein Transport Services, the prize winning 1987 Mack Super Liner II owned by Justin and Loretta Clein.

Martin says the challenge was using new materials, and ADRs, to fit on an old vehicle to make it look new.

However, he says it’s the challenging jobs that have allowed the company to push the limits of customisation. Armed with its CNC aluminium cutter there is very little King Bars can’t do to totally customise a bar to meet a customer’s request while still passing the strictest Australian Design Rule (ADR) standards for new or older heavy vehicles.

“We identified pretty early on in the piece that customisation is an area of the market that we have traditionally done and will continue to do,” Martin tells Australian Custom Trucks. “In working with the customers that are pushing the boundaries, they typically want something that no-one has seen before and what that does, is it allows us to add that to our product range and there are a lot of instances where we have added things we’ve developed as standard to the range.”

He says there has been a trend away from customisation within the bullbar industry and that the customers have been left with the choice of a “standard” bar. King Bars has bucked this trend.

“We have purposely set ourselves up to deal with customisation,” he explains.

“I have got an Engineering Manager that spends between 50 to 60 percent of his time dealing with tweaks of our current designs.

“A big part of his role is seeing if we can give people what they want.”

This is the fundamental strength of the company, working with its clients to make sure they create what the customer wants. Spearheading this side of the business is Sales Manager and front man Craig Macpherson.

Martin says the most important part of making a bar is spending time with the customer to ensure they actually know exactly what the customer wants rather than second guessing and just thinking they know what they want.

“Craig does this really well, spending time on the phone, sending through pictures until we’re confident that what we are going to build is what they actually want,” he says.

Craig elaborates that every custom bar they create is challenging in its own right.

“The hardest part is getting the image that is in your head, as a customer, on to our drawing and to the front of your truck,” he says.

The build time is also dependent on the complexity of the design. “It depends on what they are changing, if they are only tweaking a couple of pipe positions and post positions then the design can be turned around in a day, we give them a drawing that says this is what you get,” Martin explains.

“If they want to completely start with a brand new product its weeks, but it still depends on how complicated it is.”

Kevin Trussell, our Factory Manager, is a veteran in the manufacturing game and is well accomplished on the tools so knows exactly what he is talking about within the regulatory and design phases of the bar build.

Building A Reputation For Building Good Bars

King Bars has built its reputation over two decades. It first started in 1989 when the business was established in Marburg, Queensland. At the time the business developed because of the need for quality heavy duty bull bars which actually looked good in front of a truck, which it is still doing today.

Craig first worked for the business in 2008. He has been with the company twice. He came back on board when Martin took over the company in 2010 and has just reached his four years of service.

Martin and Craig work well together and the ethos is: “Here at King Bars we are aiming at being the best not the biggest,” says Martin.

Craig is essentially the front man talking to customers while Martin looks after the scheduling and production. Craig has helped King Bars strengthen its reputation working closely with the truck OEMs and dealerships.

“I get out there and talk to as many people as I can, I have a good rapport with almost every sales person we deal with, I don’t think that there are any who don’t answer the phone when I ring or at least ring me back. Several times a year I make a trip to different locations.

Two or three times a year I drive up to North Queensland, I fly up to Darwin, Martin usually flies to Perth and looks after Perth and Adelaide and I’ll drive down to New South Wales,” Craig tells ACT.

It’s this relationship strategy helping King Bars keep ahead of the pack and creating the latest bars for the latest model vehicles as they arrive. “For our market, which has always been the heavy duty end of the market, we watch what is happening with new models, and we know when new models are coming out, we try and get in as early as possible to make sure our design is suitable for that truck,” says Martin.

“Typically we are ahead of the game as far as knowing when they are going to change their truck and hence when we are going to change our bar.” Location is everything and having new vehicles on hand allows the engineers to take accurate measurements.

“Because we are Brisbane based the dealerships and manufacturers based in Brisbane make it easier for us because they effectively loan us a truck,” explains Craig.

“We arrange for it to come out, we dummy fit the bar, we can get photos of it and then we send the truck back to them. In the past we have even left the bar on it and it has gone back as a demo bar to be used on the demo truck,” he says.

It’s a similar scenario for interstate customers buying new vehicles because the trucks are coming from Brisbane truck manufacturers or through Brisbane on their way north from manufacturers based down south.

“We move the truck out of the factory, fit the bar up and move it back to wherever the transport location is,” Craig explains.

“That works really well for the dealerships in the different states because they don’t have to worry about it getting fitted up when it arrives; it comes to them with a bar already on.”

Forward Thinking Strategy

The business has grown every year under Martin and Craig’s stewardship however the market has been slow in the past six months.

This slow down has seen King Bars re-evaluate its market positioning and allowed it the time to implement its most productive and valuable research and development program it has ever undertaken.

Part of the strategy was to break into the New South Wales market and design bars for European models. “In the last six months we’ve done the most R & D ever and every one of those bumpers had to be designed, tested and approved. We just didn’t have them in the range before.”

Martin says King Bars could see a decline in its traditional markets with the mining downturn and the effect the drought has had on livestock movement. He says along with the rest of the industry, King Bars is also affected by this shift.

“We have taken onboard that we need to spread our market base a bit more and that’s why Sydney was a big opportunity for us, because it’s a completely different market and in a lot of ways its completely different products so we got serious about coming up with a decent bumper that people liked,” he explains.

“We could build a bumper before but no-one wanted to put it on their truck.

“We’ve now come up with a concept that is attractive and adds to the look of the truck.” He says this new bumper has allowed King Bars entry into the NSW market.

The other major development is a Volvo bar. He says King Bars has spent a lot of time coming up with a bar which is as strong as anything out there, but is also lighter and has the capability of doing push pull work.

“So far such a thing hasn’t existed,” he says.

Cracking The Nsw Market

Being based in Queensland King Bars always had a strong customer base in the state. However they could never crack the NSW market because they couldn’t deliver local support.

“NSW has always been an area we haven’t sold a lot into and we undertook the conscious decision to find someone that could support us there, because support for the locals is important,” he says.

“It doesn’t matter where they are, they want someone local that is going to fit the product for them, fix it, stand by it and for all of those reasons we needed to find someone who we have a similar mindset to and that would represent us well,” says Martin.

After a not so good start with another company trying to break into NSW, King Bars was directed to A & I Autogroup as a supplier with a very strong reputation and well known within the NSW industry.

A & I are now the only formal agency for King Bars in the country and offer a one-stop-shop with everything to customise a truck.

Rear Vision: what happened next?

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