Wickham Freight Lines Buys Australia's First Solar-Charged Electric Trailer Fridge After 1,671 km Trial

A family-run freight operator has put real money behind an electric alternative to diesel-powered trailer refrigeration. Wickham Freight Lines this week took delivery of what it describes as Australia’s first fully battery-electric, solar-charged refrigerated trailer unit — a Sunswap Endurance system — after a Sydney–Brisbane round trip convinced the company it was worth buying.

On most long-haul rigs, the trailer fridge runs off the prime mover’s engine or a dedicated diesel genset. The Endurance swaps both for a battery pack that gets topped up by roof-mounted solar panels while the truck is moving, plus plug-in charging between runs.

What the 1,671 km run actually proved

Wickham didn’t baby the unit. The trailer covered 1,671 kilometres over 32 hours and finished up with 67 per cent of its battery charge still in reserve — the kind of number that matters more to a fleet manager than any spec sheet.

Trial Takeaways: 1,671 km over 32 hours · 67% charge remaining at journey’s end · 80% of annual refrigeration power from on-board solar

The British-built system is sold in Australia by Protran. Sunswap claims the on-board solar generation can cover roughly 80 per cent of the fridge’s yearly energy needs, which cuts both range anxiety and how often the trailer has to be tethered to the grid.

Battery-alone endurance figures are quoted at more than 24 hours of frozen operation, over two days for multi-temperature loads, and up to two months in chilled mode. Sunswap also puts the running-cost saving at as much as 81 per cent and total cost of ownership at up to 43 per cent lower than diesel.

Why a cold-chain operator said yes

Graham Keogh, a director at Wickham, said the instruction to his team was simple: run it like any other trailer and push it hard. The results, he said, beat expectations on performance and reliability.

“You can just see that it’s a winner,” Keogh said, adding that for an east-coast fleet with a heavy cold-chain focus, the commercial case stacks up. He also framed the purchase as the start of a wider rethink of how the company powers its trailers.

Wickham is one of Australia’s largest privately held transport businesses, so a decision like this carries weight beyond a single trailer. Cold-chain freight is among the harder corners of road transport to electrify — a fridge that quits mid-run spoils the cargo — and diesel gensets have been the default answer for decades.

A purchase after a trial, not a pilot for its own sake, is the detail worth watching. If the unit holds up through an Australian summer, other refrigerated fleets will have a working local example to point at.