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Interline switch to Daewoo

Sydney route service operator Interline Bus Service has now switched to using Daewoo buses on its busy metropolitan routes.

Interline Bus Service primarily services the South Western suburbs of Sydney and made the decision to purchase the Allison-equipped Daewoo route-buses.

Interline has mainly bought European sourced buses in the past, but CEO Joe Olivieri says a lower overall purchase price and reliability of the Allison transmission is was what swayed him to decide on going with Daewoo buses.

Olivieri says the Allison-equipped Daewoos have performed very well in a number of areas including passenger comfort, reduced brake wear and driver acceptance.

He also cites the fact that Allison and its distributor Heavy Automatics have been working hard on adapting shift points and programming the transmissions to deliver improved fuel consumption for the Daewoos as a contributing factor.

“We had some exposure to Allison transmissions in the past and they were always very good, so we were keen to use them again and that was one of the reasons for moving to Daewoo,” he says.

“We are very focused on fuel economy and reducing operating costs and Allison has been able to improve the economy of our Daewoos by re programming the shift patterns, applying load based shifting.”

 Since being added to the Interline fleet shift management and re-programming has resulted in a 9.5 per cent improvement in fuel economy according to Olivieri.

“Fuel is the key to competitiveness in the bus market and we are very focused on this, we work on it constantly and we will continue to target better efficiency. Allison has proved just as focused and has delivered much better results as a result of their work on adapting the programming to suit our operation.”

“We operate on a cents per kilometre basis and we constantly monitor that figure and at this point the Allison equipped Daewoos are performing extremely well when the cost of the bus, brake wear and maintenance and the fuel is taken into account.”

The Allison transmission’s retarder is another key feature that has helped improve the efficiency of the Interline fleet.

“The retarder is very good. We have been able to reduce our brake pad wear by 75 per cent thanks to the Allison retarder.

“On our European buses we have to change brake linings at around 80,000km but with the Allison equipped Daewoos we have been regularly achieving 140,000km from the linings before needing a change.”

“The passenger comfort is also a big factor and the Allison shifts are smooth both under acceleration and while slowing down and in traffic.”

The Olivieri family has been in the bus business since 1961 when Interline bus Service was first formed. The company operates a fleet of 94 buses in NSW and a further 32 buses in a separate subsidiary company in Queensland, with more than 22 regular routes form its base at Macquarie Fields.

The organisation has one of the largest non-government bus fleets in the Sydney metropolitan area.

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