Read down the specification of almost any truck on this site and you will find the same line: left-hand drive, convertible to right-hand drive.
Nobody explains it. This post does, including the parts that are less comfortable than the phrase makes them sound.
Who needs it
Chinese trucks are built left-hand drive, because China drives on the right. Most of Africa does too, so for most of our buyers this question never arises.
Left-hand traffic in Africa is concentrated in the south and east. Fourteen countries: Botswana, Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Those drive on the left and want the steering wheel on the right.
The rest of the continent, including Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Cameroon, the DRC, Morocco and Egypt, drives on the right, and a left-hand-drive truck is the correct truck as it leaves our yard.
Check your own rule rather than the driving side alone. Some countries that drive on the left permit left-hand-drive imports and some prohibit them outright, and the rule for commercial vehicles is not always the rule for cars. Ask your customs authority or a clearing agent who handles trucks. Tell us your country and we will check the current position with you before you commit.
What a conversion actually moves
“Convertible” is doing a lot of work in that specification line, so here is what sits behind it. A steering conversion on a heavy truck is a substantial job and these are the parts of it.
The steering itself. The column, the box and the linkage move across the chassis. On a heavy truck the steering box is a large component mounted to the frame, and relocating it properly means new mounts rather than an adaptor.
The dashboard and the instruments. The binnacle moves. On an older truck this is largely mechanical and manageable. On a newer one the loom is longer, the modules sit where they sit, and it is more work.
The pedals and the linkages. Clutch, brake and throttle move, with the hydraulic and mechanical runs that serve them.
The wiper pattern. Wipers on a left-hand-drive truck are set to sweep for a driver on the left. Left as they are, they leave the new driver’s most important piece of glass unswept in rain. Rectifying this is cheap and it is skipped often.
Mirrors and lighting. Mirror arms and the field they cover. Headlamp beam pattern, which is asymmetric by design and dips towards the kerb: an unaltered beam dazzles oncoming traffic on the other side of the road.
The seat, and the second seat. Which sounds trivial and is not, because the mountings and the belt anchorages are structural.
The honest part
Three things are true about steering conversions that a specification line cannot say.
Quality varies enormously. A conversion done properly, with correct mounts, a full loom and the beam pattern corrected, is a sound truck. A conversion done cheaply is a safety problem that looks fine in a photograph. The difference is in places you cannot see from outside the cab.
It is easier on some trucks than others. Older, simpler, more mechanical vehicles convert more cleanly than newer ones with long looms and integrated modules. That is worth knowing before you pick the newest truck on the page for a right-hand-drive market.
One truck on this site does not carry the conversion note. Our Shacman Delong H3000 is printed as left-hand drive with no conversion line, where almost everything else says convertible. We have left that as the catalogue has it rather than assume the omission was an error, and the page says so. If you need right-hand drive, ask before you commit and we will get a definite answer on the specific unit.
When to have it done
Before it ships, in our workshop, is usually the right answer. Three reasons.
It is done where the truck is, by people who work on these trucks, before the vehicle is in a container. It is on the Proforma Invoice, so it is part of what you paid for and part of what you can hold us to. And it arrives ready, rather than tying up your capital while you find someone locally.
When it is not the right answer: where your own market has a good conversion trade and you already know a shop that does the work well, having it done at your end can be both cheaper and easier to inspect. Several markets do have exactly that. We will not pretend otherwise to keep the work.
What you should not do is treat it as something to sort out later. A truck that arrives in a left-hand-traffic country as left-hand drive, with no plan, is a truck sitting in a yard.
What to ask for, in writing
If you need right-hand drive, put these on the Proforma Invoice by name:
- That the unit is converted, and by whom
- What is included: steering, dashboard, pedals, wipers, mirrors, headlamp beam pattern, seat
- Photographs after conversion, not only before
- Whatever your own inspection regime requires, because some countries test converted vehicles on arrival and will want documentation of the work
The wiper pattern and the headlamp beam are the two most commonly skipped, and the two most likely to be noticed by an inspector. Name them.
The short version
If you are in the fourteen left-hand-traffic countries, this matters and it should be settled in your first message, not your last. If you are anywhere else in Africa, the truck as it stands in our yard is already the right truck and you can ignore this page.
Either way, ask us before the deposit rather than after. It is the cheapest question in the whole transaction.
How buying works, step by step → · What to send in your first message → · All the tractor units →