Rockleigh Tours prioritises passenger comfort and quality vehicles

Laurie Pincini is part of a famous family in the bus and coach industry. With his grandfather having founded transport business Rockleigh Tours 80 years ago, Pincini has grown to lead the business based in Diggers Rest, adjacent to Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport.

While Rockleigh Tours has become a major member of the charter, alpine and coach markets, Pincini is more than simply a bus veteran.

• Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive the latest news and classifieds from Australasia’s bus and coach industry
• Don’t miss a second and subscribe to our monthly ABC magazine

“Ten days before the last Victorian state election I decided to run against a local member and got just under four per cent of the vote,” Pincini says.

“It’s amazing the number of people that have asked me to put my hand up again and they’ll help out this time.

“It’s sort of anything where you see somebody needs a hand, whether it be just a local family even that’s doing it hard, we try to turn our hand at helping out. Helping people is worth more than money.”

In his time spent at Diggers Rest, the Rockleigh Tours owner has been president of the local footy club, president of the local kindergarten, president of the local junior footy club and treasurer of the senior football club. He was also chair of the local country fair committee and then ran a couple of country fairs (on his property) because the council wouldn’t allow them to run it. 

“We run them here on behalf of the Lions Club. We’ve fundraised for the bushfire appeal, we’ve fundraised for tsunami victims over the years,” he says.

 “The best bit is our drivers get involved too. When we did the Good Friday Appeal, they dressed up in rabbit or tin man costumes. They helped build props for the day; they love it. You can see the creativity come out of them.”

Rockleigh Tours dates back to the late 19th century with the pioneering Pincini family. Its evolution from a modest mail run to a vibrant touring service now sees it cover the nation with charter work, with its alpine work shuttling skiers to the snow through daily departures to Mount Buller and Mount Hotham.

When the fourth-generation family business first opened its doors, it ran services for school groups, sporting clubs and international visitors. Over the years it has continued on this theme, growing to meet client needs. 

Now, with inbound tourism returning after the COVID impacted years, Pincini is bullish about business potential. To meet this optimism, Rockleigh Tours is acquiring new vehicles from the likes of global OEM Scania.

“Over the past six months, Rockleigh Tours’ new Scania powered Coach Design charter bus has racked up 80,000 km, and it hasn’t been parked and sat there looking pretty,” Pincini says.  

Out of Rockleigh’s 22-bus fleet, 15 are Scanias that constantly move on private charter, cruise ship, snowfield, V/Line rail replacement and school trips. Some days see Pincini and his buses moving from 3.30AM to Lara on rail replacement duties.

Pincini says the family business has relied on Scania’s equipment and technology over the years, with vehicles and a monitoring system helping keep the fleet safe. 

The fuel efficiency and service from Scania Bus has allowed Pincini to excel the family business, with his staff hanging tough through some difficult periods to now give back to the Victorian community that surrounds Rockleigh Tours. 

Not content to be running the transport business started by his grandfather 80 years ago, Pincini and wife Joanne run a children’s farm called Animal Land, situated on the same 32-acre plot that is home to the bus company.

As a deeply committed community leader, Pincini recently held a special event at Animal Land that attracted 650 people and raised more than $33,687 for the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. 

“We were hit hard by COVID but I was determined to hang on to my staff, so we had them working across other parts of our business to be sure that when the charter work restarted, we were ready to go,” Pincini says.

“You can’t afford to lose staff these days, and those we have are valuable to us.

“Many of the staff of 56 working on the farm or for the bus company are family members. Whenever we have a vacancy, we hunt around the extended family for someone to slot in. 

“Joanne is the financial manager, and her brother Craig works for us as well. At various times my three brothers have driven for us too. We have had all four of our children work for the bus business; both my daughters were drivers and my son Nathan currently runs the workshop while Zac drives.”

On top of this, Pincini’s son-in-law Sean Cuthbertson still drives for Rockleigh Tours, as does his father and his mother’s cousin, as well as Pincini’s elder daughter’s fiancé Kyle. It’s all a family affair for the Pincinis.

“Now my grandchildren are starting to take an interest in buses, and they will be the fifth generation to be involved,” he says.

“I see the business continuing to grow. My kids are heavily involved in the selection of the fleet. It’s only going to get better and more efficient. 

“As Scania invests in its R&D, we’re the beneficiary of that, so anything that Scania develops we try to grab it. During a family holiday, Nathan and I visited the factory in Sweden and the testing ground. 

“It gives you reassurance that you’re buying quality product, especially because of the variation in our driving environment. I’ve got photos of one of our Scanias – on one day it is at Uluru and three days later it’s covered in snow and ice because it’s come from Uluru back to Mount Hotham.”

Much like its dedication to quality vehicles, Rockleigh Tours also has a shared passion among its staff for driving coaches. Customer feedback has shown that the brand’s enthusiasm is a clear marketing strategy.

“All of our drivers introduce themselves to the customers at the start of the journey and they talk to them and are interested in them and because we’re usually not on a tight schedule, we’re not chasing them,” Pincini says.

“At the end of a journey, you’ll always see the drivers being warmly thanked for their efforts. I just did a run with 45 school kids, and as they got off, they all said, ‘thank you, Laurie, safe journey’.

“Our business is 99 per cent charter orientated – compared to doing a route service, we’re transporting people that want to be there. Generally speaking, most are very happy to be on board.”

Rockleigh has had a few notable passengers on its buses over the years, including pop sensation Ed Sheeran, who was transported during Triple M’s Mystery Music event. A semi-disguised Sheeran sat in the bus full of concert goers heading to Hanging Rock before revealing his identity mid-journey. Pandemonium ensued.

“Most of our fleet, as you can tell by the seat spacings, is focused on passenger comfort. We don’t squeeze them all up, except for the three school spec ones where we seat 57,” Pincini says.

“Mostly it’s 49 seats with lots of legroom, reclining seats and a USB port between the seats or in the roof.

“These Coach Design buses have three removable seats to provide two wheelchair places. On the next one, because it’s a three-axle, we’ll have a bit more weight up our sleeve, so we might go with five removable seats to be able to allow extra wheelchairs, as we’ve created a small niche market for ourselves with DDA clients, but also older folk, unsteady on their feet quite like being lifted up into the bus on the chairlift.”

As a bus industry veteran, Pincini is as committed to local manufacturing as he is to promoting his own community, with Rockleigh Tours tending to specify local Australian bodybuilders. Currently new Coach Concepts and Coach Design two-axle coaches are the newest on the fleet with a further new vehicle soon to arrive.

“I’m a big ‘buy-Australian’ person,” he says. “It does cost me a few dollars more, but I expect people to support local Australian companies, so therefore I do the same. If it’s going cost me more to do that, I’ll do it, because we all want a job.

“We like having the flexibility of modifying the design to exactly what we want from the body builder. Largely this is to support our customers. Our latest bit of feedback-generated modification has been to put lower-rise stairs in at the entry, adding another step and broadening the step so that you can put more of your foot on each step as you enter or exit. 

“Many customers are older and appreciate the bigger steps for increased stability. We have extended the grab handles around the entry as well, to give them maximum support. This design is being taken up by other operators now.”

Rockleigh Tours’ coaches are specified with wheelchair access routinely, with a portable call AED device on every bus. 

“I believe we are the first operator to put one in each bus and it can mean the difference between life and death, especially if touring in remote areas,” Pincini says. 

“Even if you are in a regional area, you can wait 40-45 minutes for an ambulance. In the outback you can wait hours. Once we had to get the RFDS, and they took six hours to get to us.” 

Each of the Rockleigh vehicles are also GPS tracked. Pincini and his team have devised their own vehicle monitoring system, accessed via an iPad bolted to the dash, created by Logmaster and ITM Projects to track real-time location and vehicle performance data, and monitor for fatigue. 

“The drivers manually enter data and the order of the questions changes each time. If they enter an incorrect answer, they get a call because we want to be sure they are fit to drive. If they are not, we send out a replacement driver,” Pincini says.

“The drivers can photo any defect and log it in the system using their phones, so the mechanics can assess it there and then and decide whether it’s safe or not and determine if we need to send a replacement vehicle if they’ve been in an accident.

“The fatigue management is a big deal. The system alerts the driver an hour before he must have a break. Plus, we were probably one of the first bus companies to go to electronic work diaries.”

Pincini believes monitoring fatigue is a major factor in bus and coach safety, especially with valuable cargo on board. Often, Rockleigh Tours is carting kids around Victoria, so keeping them safe is incredibly important. 

Looking forward, Rockleigh Tours is committed to fostering the next generation of drivers and workers to ensure the family business continues operating in the local community. Out of five apprentices the operator has had to date, three have won apprentice of the year awards, with the average age of drivers sitting at around 32. 

“We want to give people a go and we’ll put time and effort where a lot of other places won’t,” Pincini says.

“We spend the time with them, sit in with them on drives, so they see how to do it. Every winter, we put new drivers through an advanced driving course, a snow course, just in case they have to go to the snowfields.

“We plan to turn over the buses between five and seven years, and they are doing around 100,000 km per year. We have this Coach Concepts bus that we got in 2019 that’s done 480,000 km already, so it has been working hard, especially given the quiet Covid period. 

“We’ve got more on the way – I tend to buy everything in pairs.”