There has been a major restructuring in the senior management of Hino South Africa in line with Toyota Motor Corporation’s global policy of staff rotation among its senior management.

“Casper Kruger, who has been the Hino SA Vice-President for the past five years and was instrumental in rolling out the change in name from Toyota SA Trucks to Hino SA, has relinquished his position at Hino SA and returned to Toyota SA,” explained the Toyota SA Senior Vice President - Sales and Marketing, Calvyn Hamman.

“Concurrent with the name change was the establishment by Casper and his team of a dedicated Hino dealer network. Casper has returned to Toyota SA Motors as Vice President - Vehicle Sales and Dealer Development for passenger vehicles and light commercials,” added Hamman.

Ernest Trautmann has taken over the position of Vice President of Hino SA from April 1. He was previously General Manager - Sales and Dealer Network at Toyota SA.

Trautmann, who joined Toyota SA in 1988 as a marketing and management consultant in the Training Department, has built up a very impressive and extensive track record in many aspects of the motor industry including eight years with the Toyota and Lexus distributor in the United Arab Emirates. In all he has spent 26 years working with Toyota product, of which 18 years have been with Toyota SA

Although Trautmann will have overall responsibility for the Hino operation in South Africa his focus will be on strategic and future planning.

Pieter Klerck, formerly Senior Manager for Advertising at Toyota SA, is now General Manager - Sales and Dealer Network at Hino SA. His new position will include parts, service and customer relations thus making him, in effect, the operational head for Hino SA.

Klerck’s links with Toyota stretches back many years. Before joining Toyota SA in 2006 he worked at two advertising agencies where he was actively involved on the Toyota account.

“We believe that splitting responsibilities at Hino in this manner will be beneficial in that it will ensure there are two people to share the load which will result in even better service for the dealers and their customers,” added Hamman.

NEW LEADERS FOR HINO SA:

More background information on the two people who now head up Hino South Africa:

Hino Vice President Ernie Trautmann has spent most of his working life – 26 years – involved with various aspects of the sales and marketing of Toyota vehicles. He joined Toyota SA in 1988 as a marketing and management consultant in the Training Department. Two years later he was appointed Toyota Touch Manager, which was a new Toyota culture to promote exceptional customer satisfaction in the dealerships and at head office.

This led to him being appointed Toyota Touch and Customer Relations Manager in 1991. Then followed a move to vehicle sales in 1993 where Trautmann was appointed a Regional Sales Manager.

He moved to Al-Futtaim Motors in Dubai in 1997 where he was initially an Area Sales Manager for this company, which is the distributor of Toyota and Lexus products in the UAE. He was later promoted to Marketing Manager.

Trautmann returned to Toyota SA in 2005 as General Manager - Marketing Projects. This led to him being appointed General Manager - Vehicles Sales in 2007, a position he held until taking up his new position as Vice President of Hino SA from the beginning of April.

Hino SA’s general manager for sales and the dealer network, Pieter Klerck, joined Toyota SA as the Senior Manager for advertising in 2006. Prior to taking up this position he was Managing Director of the FCB Tanzania, an advertising agency based in Dar-Es-Salaam.

He started his working career as a marketing analyst at Pilkington Glass. Klerck then moved into the advertising world, joining Saatchi and Saatchi, where he worked on many accounts, including several in the automotive industry. His main focus was on the Toyota, Lexus and Toyota After Sales accounts.

Then followed a move to the FCB advertising agency where he was responsible for the Toyota main account at the Johannesburg office before being transferred to head up FCB’s Tanzanian office.

As mentioned previously Klerck joined Toyota SA as Senior Manager – Advertising in 2006 and was the Senior Manager - Marketing Communications, Planning and Advertising prior to his move to Hino SA at the beginning of April.

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Hino Embarks On New Customer Relationship Programme

Hino has launched a global programme to put renewed focus on customer relationship building with an initiative known as Total Support, where the focal points are sales and service marketing to customers. Hino South Africa is tackling the project with enthusiasm already, according to its new Vice President, Ernie Trautmann, addressing a media briefing at the Toyota SA head office recently.

“This is a process where all the business activities work together to foster and deepen trustworthy relationships between the Hino head offices in Japan and South Africa, its dealers and its customers,” explained Trautmann.

The newly-appointed vice president added that the move to a new truck manufacturing facility in Prospecton, near Durban, was now complete and production is running smoothly.

The relocation from a nearby site had enabled the production engineers to improve systems and install new equipment to streamline production and improve quality. The relocation cost R54-million and the official opening, which will be attended by the President of Hino Motors Limited, Japan,Masakazu Ichikawa, will take place on May 21.

Earlier Trautmann had announced that Hino had made a good start to 2014, with record sales of 425 units in March – the first time more than 400 Hino trucks had been sold in a calendar month in SA. Total Hino sales of 890 units in the first quarter of 2014 saw the brand move back into second place among truck manufacturers and distributors as well as maintaining leadership in the medium truck market and regaining top spot in the heavy truck market as well.

Concluding his address to the media Trautmann quoted the Executive President of Hino Motors, Koichi Ojima who said recently: “Since there is a limit to what can be accomplished by an individual we shall unite as one team and fully leverage our strengths to fulfil our mission which is to ‘fulfil needs in the transport of people and goods to contribute in enabling a prosperous society.’”

Ends