4 days ago
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Husband-and-wife team Mickoy Holness and Nickeisha Horne Holness have entered the truck dealership market as representatives of a Chinese brand.
Holness, who has two decades of experience in trucking, said he was approached by Chinese interests to set up a dealership less than a year ago, in August 2024.
It took the couple two months to decide, according to Horne Holness, and having said yes to the opportunity, they signed the contract two months after that, in December 2024, and are now representatives of the Howo truck brand.
The dealership, which is still being set up, will operate under the name of El Mini Supplies and Services Limited, but that wasn’t the company’s initial line of business.
El Mini was incorporated in February 2021 with Holness and Horne Holness as equal owners. Since then, the focus has been on honey production, which they still do, Horne Holness said.
Some of the start-up funds for the truck dealership was to come from friends and family, and the sale of personal assets. Holness sold his house in New York, and the couple has other assets on the market for sale.
“We’re going all in, all in,” Horne Holness said.
So far, the couple have invested around US$750,000 in property acquisition, infrastructure, equipment and the initial shipment of Howo trucks, Mickoy Holness said.
El Mini will be dealing in the TX model of Howo Trucks that are made by China National Heavy Duty Truck Group, CNHTC, the same truck maker that produces Sinotruk.
El Mini is targeting the specialist and heavy-duty segments of the market.
“We are going to do the 310 horsepower, up to 430hp, and if we get any special order for anything above that, we can supply it,” Holness said, adding that about 98 per cent of the demand in the Jamaica’s truck market sits within that engine-power range.
Holness said the trucks are capable of grinding out as much as 2,300 foot-pound torque, the type of pulling power that hauls big loads over steep inclines, such as the North-South Highway.
“Even though we are putting in highways in Jamaica, some of these highways have some very steep hills,” and sometimes trucks encounter difficulty and have to stop on those steep terrain, he said.
“You want to have that torque to be able to move off the hill with the load,” Holness said.
Other players in the Chinese truck market include Tank-Weld Equipment, which sells the Shacman brand; Tools Hardware & Supplies Limited, which trades in Sinotruk; partners ATL Automotive and Desmond Panton’s Key Motors, which handle Foton Trucks; and Stewart Industrial, a dealer in FAW trucks.
Previously, the supply of trucks capable of dealing with tough Jamaican roads was mainly confined to 10-year-old imported units of brands such as Mack Truck and International from the United States, and Leyland and DAF trucks from the United Kingdom.
But, age aside, the increasing sophistication of the gadgetry in these trucks created its own challenge for truck owners, due to a lack of local skills to effect repairs.
The Jamaican market began to seriously look east for a solution around a decade ago.
For Tank-Weld, the deciding factor was the performance of the Shacman trucks on the construction projects of China Harbour Engineering Company, CHEC, which is one of the largest contractors operating in Jamaica.
After testing the trucks in 2017, Tank-Weld launched Shacman Jamaica in mid-2018. The company tested the market with orders of 10 to 25 trucks, but the first large order of 200 trucks was all but sold out by the time they arrived from China, according to Managing Director John Ralston.
“The market really took on to these trucks, and we at Shacman Jamaica are very proud that we led the way in the introduction of these trucks to the demanding Jamaican market,” Ralston said.
Sinotruk, China’s third-largest truck manufacturer, officially entered the Jamaican market in partnership with Tools Hardware & Supplies around April 2020 and began trading in the trucks in May of that same year.
Jalil Dabdoub of Tools Hardware said his company first swapped out its fleets of American and UK trucks, and did so with an eye on possibly entering the market as a truck dealer if the experiment worked.
“Sale of the trucks has been off the charts, and the equipment has proven itself, from deep in the bauxite mines to the steepest inclines we have on our roads,” Dabdoub said.
He added that Holness has often given him advice, and gave his blessing to the two “bold entrepreneurs”, notwithstanding that they were now entering the same line of business.
However, Dabdoub said the two dealerships will not be in direct competition, as they will operate within different market segments.
Meanwhile, Stewart Industrial is reporting brisk business since they introduced FAW in 2023; while the partnership between ATL and Key Motors has seen the introduction of a wider range of truck, including SUTs, or sports utility trucks. Previously, Foton was imported mostly as dump trucks.
El Mini has opted to supply all types of trucks, but there will be a particular focus on those with flat-beds, cranes and winches or other specialist equipment.
“We’ll be doing pretty much any type of truck” – from tractor heads, tractor head with crane, tractor heads with PTO systems, lowboys, reefer trucks, dry box, flatbed, tow trucks, cargo, to rail trucks and more, Holness said. Reefer refers to refrigerated trucks.
As to the cost of the Howo units, small six-wheelers will sell for about $9 million to $9.5 million and the dump trucks will sell for about $15 million to $20 million, “depending on configuration and equipment”, he said.
While the distributorship gets up and running, the couple say they will keep their present jobs at ARC Manufacturing – Horne Holness in sales and marketing, and Holness in trucking and transport.
“Eventually, I’m sure that I would have to go full-time in El Mini; but for now, my family has no problem with me working and also working on my dream,” Horne Holness said.
Holness concurred as he outlined a programme of sorts.
“Same for me. I will be on both sides. I will still be supporting and monitoring the transportation for ARC while doing El Mini. But sooner or later you might have to take a decision. It would be a phased approach,” he said.
Holness final preparations are being made to receive the first shipment of trucks, which are scheduled to arrive in Kingston in July or August.
El Mini is headquartered at Westmoreland Avenue, off Spanish Town Road in Kingston. The complex will have two repair bays, and a 4,000-square-foot warehouse will house offices, inventory and spare parts.
English (US) ·