Mit Fuso bullish on Canadian sales

TORONTO — Daimler Trucks’ medium-duty division Mitsubishi Fuso is on a roll across Canada.

They started the year with 17 dealers across Canada, they’ve signed five new ones since Jan.1 to bring that total to 22; and they’re expecting to sign three to five more over the next few months.

"We’re not going to let the grass grow under our feet,” Mitsubishi Fuso Trucks’ Director of Sales in Canada Brian Shantz told todaystrucking.com during a break in a dealers’ meeting held here last week.

“Quoting activity around sales levels started to turn around the beginning of March,” he says.

The company opened up shop in this country in 2000. By 2008, in Canada, Mitsubishi-Fuso laid claim to over 25 percent of the medium-duty cabover market.

Mitsubishi-Fuso attributes a large part of the company’s growing market share to the five-year warranty that it offers on its FE, FG, FK and FM series. On FE and FG series, the warranty holds for 280,000 km and on the other models, it applies for the first 400K km.

The Mitsubishi-Fuso team is also on the verge of releasing details of a project they’re calling the LIFT truck; Light, International Future Truck. “In other words,” Shantz says, “a truly world truck where the developmental technology would be applied across world markets.”

Michael Behrens, M-F’s Tokyo-based Sales and Service International Director, calls the LIFT project “a future generation of light-duty truck.

“I can’t give you more exact details,” he says, adding “but we’re pretty confident about it.”