About
One works, since 1994
Thermlock Cold Chain Systems Pty Ltd has built insulated bodies at Wingfield for thirty-two years. Fifty-one people, one building, no second site.
How the company started
The business began as a repair shop for insulated bodies, working on other manufacturers' products. Ten years of cutting open other people's panels is an unusually good education in what fails, and the decision to start building complete bodies in 1994 came directly out of it.
The panel press went in the following year, because buying panels in meant inheriting somebody else's bond line. It remains the single most important piece of plant in the building.
Why we stay at one site
Every stage of a body happens inside one building at Wingfield: pressing, bonding, mounting, fit-out, paint and proving. Fifty-one people, of whom thirty-eight are on the shop floor.
We have been asked several times to open in the eastern states. The answer has been no each time, because the moment a body is finished at a site where it was not started, the person who bonded it is no longer the person who has to answer for it.
What we are not
We do not sell, hire or operate vehicles. We do not supply refrigeration plant, we install what the customer specifies, and we take no commission from plant manufacturers. We do not badge other builders' bodies as our own.
Those boundaries are why an operator can ask us which unit fails early and get a straight answer.
Works visits
Customers are welcome, and most come once during their build. The point worth catching is when the body is on the chassis and before the lining goes in — that is when a change to door arrangement or restraint layout costs an afternoon instead of a rebuild.
Ring ahead so somebody is free to walk you round. Steel-capped boots and a high-visibility vest are needed on the floor; we keep both in the office in most sizes.
