Every town has a few businesses that are part of the fabric of the area: generous, visible and distinctly, classically local. Nestled in Cowes on Victoria’s Phillip Island, New Wave Concreting is one such company, as dedicated to their customers and township as they are to owner and skipper, Luke Hinrichs.
Luke and the team help the locals ‘beautify’ their environment with decorative concreting, from feature walls to patios, down to the good old driveway and a glow-up for the garage floor.
Decorative concreting is by no means an easy feat. It’s a highly sought after service that has kept New Wave Concreting busy year after year for almost a quarter of a century.
“Concreting is something a bit different to most trades because it’s not something that you can get qualified people for, there’s no apprenticeship,” Luke explained.
“It’s really hard to find professional employees, so I’ve been very lucky to get such a top-level crew.”
It is always gratifying to see a proud business owner who isn’t shy of sharing the accolades around and Luke has his focus locked and loaded on the team.
“We have a fantastic group of five guys who are skilled and know exactly what they’re about. They’re just extremely friendly, local guys with homes in the area, young families, kids at school and it definitely helps. It keeps the clients happy, and it makes my life a lot easier. The guys can run New Wave Concreting without much assistance from me,” he adds proudly.
After running an Isuzu Ready-to-Work Tradepack for eight years without finding fault, it made sense to Luke to stick with a proven formula when the time came to evolve the New Wave fleet. According to Luke, they couldn’t have gone anywhere except back to Matt Evans at Patterson Cheney Isuzu for a brand new Ready-to-Work FRR 107-210 Tipper.
The New Wave Concreting Tipper isn’t hard to spot on the streets of Phillip Island. After taking away top prize in the F series category of last year’s Truck of the Year competition, it’s also easy to see why.
A head-turning wrap from Steve Price at CC Signs and Designs has made their new Tipper into a mobile advertisement for the company.
“People have responded really well to the truck, quite a few clients have said they’ve gotten my number directly off it… I even get stopped by holiday makers if I’m driving it around on the weekend,” said Luke.
The Isuzu FRR Tipper is a turn-key transport solution that can be driven straight from the showroom to the job site—with a quick stop-off for a wrap of course—and fits the bill perfectly for businesses like Luke’s.
You can find the New Wave crew out and about in the Tipper daily, working on residential streets and cul-de-sacs, reversing into awkward driveways and parking on the fly in their nimble new work truck.
A generous GVM of 11,000 kg and GCM of 16,000 kg have allowed the New Wave team to increase their productivity, getting more done in one run than ever before. And with one of the quickest tipper raise times in the business and a tray designed for rough and tumble, the FRR is equipped to handle job after job for New Wave.
“Each job used to need a few runs to the tip or back to our premises, but now it can all get done in one go. Our guys are all on site for the day, so the job is taking less time which means happier customers.”
“We’ve been using a much smaller tipper for years, so have definitely noticed the difference the Isuzu has made in making the job much easier and our dig-out quicker,” he said.
“With all the extra payload we can get more weight on the back, saving us at least two or three trips a day around the island.”
Luke notes that one of the greatest joys of owning a business is when it becomes part and parcel of everyday life in the community. It’s as good as it gets when you are recognised as a local fixture.
“We’re pretty well known around town,” Luke chuckles. “We did all the concreting in the Koala Park and a lot of the major tourist attractions down this way, so we’ve been able to get involved, which has been great.
“It’s a really good community down here, so we help out wherever we can—we do the concreting work for the golf clubs, and we’re involved with the sporting clubs, football, netball… we sponsor the lawn bowls clubs, both the golf clubs as well.
“In a place as small as this, it’s important do right by your customers or you won’t last five minutes,” Luke noted wryly.
Consistency is the key here and it takes only a quick look online to know that New Wave Concreting are hitting the mark.
A judicious choice of tools to get the jobs done efficiently not only keeps clients satisfied and the good reviews flowing—and a little plug in the form of Isuzu’s Truckpower magazine hasn’t hurt business either.
“I’m pleasantly surprised by the local feedback just from being featured in the magazine,” Luke mentioned. “But it’s great having a really strong, solid business with a fantastic clientele. We’re very consistently booked ahead four to six months a year…our next big project is the Cowes Cultural Centre.”
