Interview 50 years of terminal tractors by George Terberg

A personal take on the development of the terminal tractors

George Terberg was director of Terberg Benschop in the period that terminal tractors sales really took off. This provided a solid foundation for Terberg as it is today. He is currently a member of the Supervisory board of the Royal Terberg Group.

In an interview, Mr Terberg looked back on this exciting period “I joined the family business in 1978. At that time we were still mostly selling trucks to the construction industry, a very competitive market, and only sold around 65 terminal tractors a year. Sales outside the Netherlands were handled by another company. I arranged for us to get those sales rights back, which made it possible to develop an international presence.

Terminal tractors were a niche market not served by large truck manufacturers. That gave us an opportunity to distinguish ourselves from the competition and build specialist products. Initially sales were fairly steady, but the growth of containerisation in the 1990s meant our market expanded rapidly. We managed to respond to that and in less than a decade tractor sales tripled.

At the same time the logistics market was expanding. Initially that industry used road tractors to shunt semi-trailers at distribution centres. But they realised our YTs with lifting fifth wheel could make the operations much more efficient. So that also increased our volume.

Meanwhile we were building an international network of distributors who could not only sell tractors but also provide the support customers needed. Later we started setting up international Terberg subsidiaries, to bring us even closer to the customers. Initially the focus was on Europe. Getting a major order from the Port of Felixstowe for our YTs really helped us. It proved to the industry that we were a serious and dependable partner and helped us win orders from large container terminals.

Next, we broadened our focus to the Middl East and Africa. And obviously Asia, where we set up a joint venture to build tractors in Malaysia. That approach has proven to work well and is being repeated in the Americas where our partnership with the Taylor family is very successful. So now we are building a production plant in the USA too.

Being a niche manufacturer of high-quality specialist vehicles made it possible for Terberg to build a very successful business. It’s great to have contributed to that.”