37 minute read
Teletrac Navman Fleet Focus
Transporting New Zealand endeavours to work alongside government to help address industry issues.
damage to our industry’s reputation. The whole episode also increases the risk that our industry could be near the front of the queue for a Fair Pay Agreement, which is a prospect that Transporting New Zealand and every operator is very keen to avoid.
At Conference, Jonathan Caseley, executive director of PERFORM-X Aotearoa, explained how his company’s tool that provides accurate information about employment in our industry shows there is a shortage of about 2,400 drivers across the country. This is a far cry from 9,000 and is the scale of the shortage that initiatives like Te ara ki tua Road to success help to address.
Road to success is a classic case of working with ministers and officials to provide solutions that are industry-led but government supported. At the end of the day the driver shortage is fundamentally our problem to sort out; it is unrealistic to expect any government can and would be able to do this for us. Cooperation, however, is the key, and to establish a good cooperative relationship with decision-makers over a complex issue like our driver shortage is how Transporting New Zealand will continue to go about our advocacy work.
Finally, let me wish all New Zealand Truck & Driver readers a great Christmas and New Year. For all of those that will work through this period keeping New Zealand moving, good on you and thank you. For too long what the transport and logistics sector does for our country has been taken for granted but if the pandemic had one silver lining it was that at least now there is a wee bit more appreciation for just how important transport operators, professional drivers and freight handlers are. I, for one, will be raising a glass to you all. T&D
Ia Ara Aotearoa Transporting New Zealand’s Regional and Sector Advisors are available to assist members right around New Zealand.
Ia Ara Aotearoa –Transporting New Zealand
PO Box 1778, Wellington 04 472 3877 info@transporting.nz Nick Leggett, Chief Executive 04 472 3877 • 021 248 2175 nick@transporting.nz Mike McRandle, Regional & Sector Manager 027 556 6099 Keith McGuire, Region 2 027 445 5785 Sandy Walker, Region 3 027 485 6038 John Bond, Region 4 027 444 8136 Jim Crouchley, Region 5 027 261 0953
www.transporting.nz
Story Ian Parkes Photos Gerald Shacklock
Mainstream Momentum
Diane, Greg and Cameron Haliday with one of the Mainstream trucks carrying the company’s support for the Kiwis national rugby league teams.
GPS Tracking – eRUC – Job Management – eLogbook
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A recent addition to the Mainstream fleet is this Scania R 650 with curtainsiders in the colours of Harraways.
SUDDENLY NOTICING JUST HOW MANY TRUCKS
on the nation’s highways now wear the distinctive black Mainstream livery has given many people the impression the firm has come from nowhere. However, says founder and managing director Greg Haliday, the firm is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year and it has been there all along, just ‘in hiding’.
It has been steadily expanding its network by acquiring other trucking firms, bringing them into the fold to extend its reach and to provide the service standards Mainstream demands for its customers.
“We just didn’t bother to rebrand everything that was there because the cost would be millions — I think it was going to be two and half million dollars to rebrand — so we decided just to let the existing fleets time out and as we replace them, we’ll bring in Mainstream units, and it took us a fair while to do that,” says Greg.
“That probably took us four or five years to rotate them out, so people have probably become very aware of us over the last two or three years as that exercise has essentially been completed. Now everybody’s going ‘God, you guys have suddenly expanded!’ Well, yeah, we’ve been at it for a while — just not spending on our branding.”
Now, with the national network all but complete and the firm offering the full gamut of freight and logistics services, Mainstream is keen to raise its profile and to attract the attention of the biggest customers, both nationally and internationally — hence the sponsorship of the national rugby league sides — both men and women.
Mainstream’s black and yellow branding on seven of its trucks has been joined by the black and white livery of the Kiwis national rugby league teams. Mainstream is a co-sponsor of the men’s team. Its name, in yellow, is on the jersey’s sleeves. It is also the main sponsor of the women’s team, getting the prime spot on the front of the jersey. Greg says former Olympic rower, Olympic chef de mission, and sports promoter Rob Waddell approached the firm with the idea.
“We were looking for an opportunity to basically increase our profile, so this was an ideal opportunity. It was a demographic that worked quite well for us, and it worked nationally and internationally — because we do internal freight and we’re seen offshore and in Australia which is important to us. The NRL didn’t have a major sponsor for the women’s team and seeing as the profile of women’s sport is beginning to increase it was negotiated as a package deal.
“It’s all just about making people aware of our brand, about giving our business credibility — particularly to multinationals. Let’s be honest, we’re supporting a national team. People know that doesn’t come cheaply so we must be significant and it’s time for us to show that we have actually built to a size where we can provide almost any service — and nothing is too big.”
Mainstream has been the subject of an NZ Truck & Driver Fleet Focus before, in 2013 when its expansion was gathering pace and not long after it had moved into its new premises in Kiwi St, Otahuhu, Auckland — a prescient move for the Kiwi rugby league sponsors. Greg and Diane Haliday started the company in 1992 as a freight forwarding business focused on the shifting freight from Auckland to Australia and Lyttleton. Mainstream routes at the time, hence the name.
Mainstream soon decided it needed more control over its performance and acquired National Express which had branches in Tauranga, Wellington, Christchurch and linehaul services to Wellington. It set a pattern for further expansion.
“We wanted to basically complete our infrastructure around
the country because we weren’t domiciled anywhere south of Christchurch and we still outsourced a number of line haul routes,” says Greg.
“Today we have 15 branches, and we line haul to everywhere in the country except the west coast of the South Island. That has dramatically improved not just our profile but our control and that’s been the critical thing; we have the network, and we deliver in the 90 percentile of our own freight, and we have that control over it so anything we implement in terms of systems and IT progression we can do really quite quickly.”
This is the real key to Mainstream’s success. It is focused on providing a seamless logistics solution to customers and it has a built-in advantage few of their competitors can match. Diane Haliday had a strong background in IT.
Diane remains the company’s IT director and is in charge of all development of the system she built for the business. She has two other programmers working with her and three more staff providing technical support to staff and customers.
At the time of the last Fleet Focus, Mainstream had just taken over a third-party logistics business. It implemented a new off-the-shelf warehousing system, but it didn’t have the level of sophistication they needed. Diane had started designing her own system before the decision was made to buy off the shelf. She picked that up again and within a matter of weeks it was up and running. The core of that system is still operating today, and it remains an integral part of the Mainstream freight system which is still being continually refined.
“The overall system is now world class,” says Greg.
“You’ve got to have not just operational excellence but the IT smarts to support that. Both are absolutely critical. One thing with our business is that when we go into a new aspect of logistics, we bring in experts in that field. I don’t want any weaknesses in any service offering we provide, so everything has to be world class in its own right. You often find some businesses are strong in their core aspect and weak in others. We are not like that. Our international freight is run by international people; our logistics is run by 3PL specialists; our container business is run
by experts in this field.”
All three of the Halidays’ children have worked at the business at some time. Kathleen is keen to make her own way in the world, so she is currently working in recruitment for the transport industry, second son James has gone back to his books — Greg says he’s a perpetual student — but eldest son Cameron has been in the firm for the last decade after completing a commerce degree. He emphasises how significant Diane’s and Greg’s, and latterly his own, knowledge of freight forwarding has been in developing the IT system.
“It’s very rare that you’ll get a professional programmer who will understand the intricacies of what’s going on. She [Diane] just naturally will come up against a challenge and will know what’s happening on the floor and how it all goes together.
“We can be really agile. We can respond to what our customers are after because we have that whole network tool, it’s all Mainstream and we’re not trying to T into a whole lot of different systems and cobble it together like a lot of competitors these days. It’s a complete bespoke system that is rolled out across the whole branch network,” says Cameron.
“We’ve continued to invest heavily into our IT system,” says Greg. “As Cam says, it’s all bespoke and it’s extremely practical
The Mainstream Auckland metro fleet include new UD Quon Euro 6 units.
and it’s extremely sophisticated but it’s written by people that understand freight.
“The system is built from the ground up and it’s meant for storemen or drivers to be able to very quickly learn it and master it. Most companies chose a system based on its accounting and reporting because the decision is often made by a CIO or a CFO and that’s what they want. We wanted something that operationally worked very well for our staff and our customers.
“We have never scrapped it and started again like everybody else has. We have just enhanced and enhanced it. We are on a very good operating system that is world class.”
Another change that convinced Mainstream it is time to promote itself has been the number of bigger customers actively seeking them out, often through word of mouth in their networks.
Greg says for many years the sales team had been knocking on doors, now they are getting calls asking if they’d like to have a chat over a coffee. Cameron says the sales team’s main focus when onboarding customers is on delivering process improvements for them. That has been really smooth, and the
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Above: Greg Haliday says Mainstream’s presence has grown rapidly as new trucks carrying the company’s black and gold branding have been introduced. Below: Arrivals at the Kiwi St, Otahuhu headquarters of Mainstream.
growth has been “huge”.
Cameron highlighted another aspect of how the bespoke Mainstream IT system streamlines operations. “We constantly get feedback not only from what our customers want but our staff. ‘Here’s the pinch points, here’s the hurdles we are facing’ and we can remove those within a day a lot of the time. With an off-the shelf solution you’re tackling different external programmers all day long — it could take months to get anywhere. We make a decision, we implement it, we run with it, and it happens very quickly.”
“A lot of time they [new staff] see that we take away the different challenges they have always had by the use of technology. Very rarely do you get any pushback on it because they can see the improvement, that it is making life easier for them.”
Greg says they have had resistance from a very small number of drivers — generally of a more senior generation.
“I do sympathise with them as I’m a technosaur myself that’s why I leave it all to Di and Cam.
“We’ve only had one case we had to give up on. That gentleman was 82 years old. Eventually he decided he was going to hang up his boots. He just couldn’t get his head around it — refused to. The crazy thing about it was his son was in our IT department, but he couldn’t get him across the line either.”
Cam explains the IT system also plays a key role in creating a consistent company culture of being open and dealing with any issues honestly. Because it has been built to give customers visibility of where their consignments are it means there’s
nowhere to hide.
“As soon as a driver captures an electronic proof of delivery it’s straight onto the system, so it allows us to push out real time notification of delivery to customers who want that level of visibility and traceability, and it ties everything in together. When they do get a proof of delivery, we get a GPS snapshot of where they are at that point of time so it’s bulletproof.”
Greg says safety is another big part of the company’s culture, which led to another key message. Greg says they pay a lot of attention to looking after staff with cash and prizes and personal and branch awards, lots of company gear, which includes a recent distribution of rugby league jerseys. He says part of being authentic is encouraging people to take personal responsibility for safety and for the safety of each other.
“Everybody knows ‘zero harm’ everywhere is not achievable. You’ve got to give people attainable results, practical results, so that’s where we came up with ‘Yeah, NAH’ — Nah being No Avoidable Harm”.
One of those practical solutions has been the implementation of SonaSafe, a sonar-based proximity warning system which will be applied to the fork hoists that buzz around depots like bees around a hive.
People in the depot will wear devices that alert drivers
to the presence of someone else in their exclusion zone. It can even slow down the at-risk machines. It also has reporting functions that captures the near misses, reported or unreported, allowing operations to be refined to improve safety. Mainstream will be the first freight company to implement it starting in January after extensive independent trials in Kiwirail and other warehouse operations. Greg invested in the company three years ago and has seen it overcome the technical challenges of its first five years. It is now attracting attention from overseas, says Greg. “I was so impressed with it and desperate to get a solution for fork hoist incidents that can happen in freight companies, so I jumped on board with it. Our number one hazardous place is in depots because there are so many moving pieces.” To get to Mainstream’s current position from where it was in 2013, Greg says the company focused on expanding its network, setting up operations that would live up to its promise of delivery virtually anywhere in country within 48 hours. “We bought out the freight business of McDowell’s (May 2014) and that allowed us to open up further south than Christchurch, so that gave us Dunedin and Invercargill. We didn’t take over their rural divisions; we took over their freight business and they were in Nelson The Mainstream commissioning tradition: Shivika Sharma “launches” the latest Scania and Christchurch, and we rolled those R650 to the Mainstream Fleet and named the truck “On The Dot”. up into us. And then we moved into their Dunedin and Invercargill operations. “Then we bought Transworld (April 2016); that allowed us to move into Central Otago. I think six weeks after we took over McDowells the phone went and shortly afterwards we ended up acquiring most of Retko Haulage (October 2014). We didn’t actually buy their shares, we ended up buying the majority of the business of Retko in Wellington and a couple of years after that we acquired the entire business of Retko and rolled that into Mainstream. That really strengthened us in the lower North Island — Palmerston and Wellington — so both of those acquisitions were really to complement our infrastructure. “And this year Di and I acquired the majority shareholding in TDL Haulage — a big swinglift operation. That business has doubled in the last six months. And we have just taken over the Rotorua operations of Combined Logistics, again filling in one of the last holes of our network.” When NZ T&D visited in 2013, Mainstream had just moved into its new 4000m2 freight hub in Otahuhu and was building a 6000m2 warehouse for its new 3PL business. It had 1000m2 of covered unloading area and 650m2 of office space. It is now bursting at the seams. “We’ve built onto this building twice adding 7000m2 and the only thing we can’t keep adding is carparks and now space is at
Above: The Mainstream facility has its own rail siding (left) and a large covered loading area. Below left: Cameron Haliday at work with Mainstream’s in-house IT technology. Below right: Bold green livery for FMI Building Innovation is another element of the Mainstream operation.
a premium. We’ve basically maxxed out. We can’t do much more with it, so that’ll be our next great challenge, what do with our Auckland operation,” says Greg.
“Our 3PL is at capacity, our freight operation is almost at capacity so now we have to look at further premises or doing business smarter.”
In 2013, Greg was optimistic about moving more freight by rail as Kiwirail was upgrading rolling stock and it didn’t have the same requirement for backloading — but that changed when Kiwirail added a premium for one-way loads. Rail now only accounts for about 5% of Mainstream’s line haul operations.
While some argue the emphasis has changed from just in time delivery to security making options like rail and sea freight more attractive, Greg says much of merchandising is still geared around refilling stock on shelves. That means the speed road transport offers will remain critical. The question is how to do that most efficiently.
That brings up the question of emissions. Mainstream employs a firm to monitor its carbon footprint and advise on strategies. “In the interim we maintain a very current fleet. We like to think that our line haul fleet particularly is one of the most modern in the country. We are almost entirely Euro 6, only a very small number of Euro 5.
“You will see three different brands in the line haul fleet: Mercedes, Volvo, and Scania. They all represent different times in our company when we acquired them. The Mercedes were first
when we got out of Freightliners. The same dealer represented both, so we managed to trade them in against Mercedes. Then we bought Volvos because Volvo I-shift technology was attractive to us at the time and since then we’ve moved to Scania.
“The Scania has been a mixture of the efficiency of the vehicle, driver satisfaction with their safety aspects, and serviceability, which has been massive for us. The reason that we changed to Scania was that Scania in Sweden became involved in the New Zealand market and that for us was a game changer because they made commitments on servicing and they have honoured those commitments, in fairness.”
Continuing its practice from 2013, Mainstream runs three drivers per truck driving from Auckland to Christchurch. Eightwheel Scania 650s with Fruehauf 5-axle trailers are preferred because they have greater cubic carrying capacity than B-trains.
“These things are worked hard so they are doing big kilometres and servicing is critical to us because we only have small windows. We need reliability from our service partners. Especially if we do have a breakdown. We need to get rolling again,” says Greg.
“One of the things, too, with not just staying with the same brand but the same model of truck, our drivers will regularly jump from one unit to another and go again. And if that’s in the middle of the night you don’t want somebody who’s suddenly got an emergency situation immediately in front of them suddenly
The new Scania for Harraways delivers from the rolled oat business in Dunedin to the North Island.
having to take a moment to think ‘I’m now in a different type of truck’ so they can just react — and the guys do really love that.
“We do try and keep the Volvos to specific runs where it is the same drivers. That can sometimes get out of whack if we’ve had a breakdown and we need to cover and whatever else, but we do try and keep them from the long haul.”
The fleet currently comprises 55 Scanias with more coming next year. There are five Volvos left and six Mercedes Actros. There are five Kenworths. The recently acquired TDL fleet has a mixture of Dafs and Kenworths.
“We only have two B-trains in the entire fleet, both Scanias. They only have one tractor and two sets of trailers so one does Christchurch–Wellington with a trailer swap on Picton wharf. Only the trailer goes across, the tractor stays in the South Island. The other one runs from Christchurch to Central Otago. Drops one and picks up the other trailer which is preloaded and goes back. It allows us to do big kilometres with these things.
“That one does about 900k a day with one driver. That one has long range fuel tanks, so it doesn’t have to stop for fuel, just the half hour breaks and on again.”
In the metro areas there are 20 Hinos, 10 Mitsubishi Fighters and the rest, about 26, are UD Nissans — including new acquisitions, just shy of 200 trucks, all up.
“We insist on Euro 6 even on the Japanese trucks and one of the reasons we like Nissan is that they share Volvo Euro 6 technology,” Greg says.
“We are very staunch in our replacement programmes. Again, it comes down to our theme of reliability not just image but its reliability and driver satisfaction. To attract the better drivers, you have to have the better gear.”
One of the exceptions to Mainstream’s firm policy of owning all of its assets, apart from the land it leases from Kiwirail for its railside position in Wellington, is its fleet of owner drivers in Auckland. While it runs company trucks in other centres, the proportion of its metro fleet operated by owner drivers in Auckland has risen to 80%.
Greg says the 22 ODs just know their areas so well and they have much better productivity. Mainstream helps with training, expanding their areas and annual reviews, which Greg says they appreciate. “It works really well for them, and us,” says Greg.
During lockdown, Mainstream parked up its own trucks in Auckland and turned all of the business over to the owner drivers. The total number of staff including contractors and owner drivers is just over 300.
Despite the emphasis on Mainstream’s brand, the company has gone the other way with a couple of customers, painting new trucks in their livery.
“Harraways, the Dunedin rolled oats business, is a very old and respected company and a very large account,” says Greg. “We were fortunate in winning their trust to give us a shot at doing all their distribution and we came up with a solution to do their freight which sees virtually all their deliveries to the North Island happen within 48 hours from Dunedin — and that happens every day of the working week.
“Harraways has made a long-term commitment to us, and this is our way of giving back.
We have a tradition here that we get a lady to crack a bottle across the bows … well now it’s across the step because we have a few damages — some women can really swing a bottle — and we’ve completed one of our brand new Scanias in Harraways imagery and invited one of their staff to commission it. It’s a tradition that our staff really enjoy.”
Mainstream did the same thing for a firm it has had a very long association with, supplying five Scania trucks and trailers
Left: Diane Haliday working on Mainstream’s IT developments with technician Michael Scarlett.
Above: Nafiz Ali is Mainstream’s Chief Implementation Officer and is already planning ahead for the introduction of electric and hydrogen vehicles.
to FMI Building Innovation designed specifically to their product dimensions.
“Our drivers really now believe strongly in commissioning, or blessing them, if you like. We had an incident where we put five brand new line haul units on and they were in their livery and the customer, unbeknownst to us, forgot to do commissioning for two of them. Both vehicles were in significant accidents in the first few weeks.
“It’s weird alright but since then our drivers have been adamant that trucks must be commissioned before they will drive them.”
“Everyone loves it,” says Greg. “Is it sexist? I just think it’s traditional. If there’s a guy that feels that strongly about it, he’s more than welcome to crack a bottle”.
The appointed women also get to choose the name of the trucks they commission. “The Harraways one, it’s got a brilliant name. It’s called ‘The Rolling Oat’ — because, you know, they specialise in rolled oats.”
Looking to the future, Greg hopes next year will be the last year Mainstream places orders for diesel trucks. “We’ll build ourselves to a spot where for a year or two we won’t have to do replacements and during that time we’re hoping there will be advances made in electric and hydrogen. That’s part of our commitment to reduce our carbon footprint.”
Chief implementation officer Nafiz Ali says the replacement programme has slots for electric and hydrogen vehicles.
“Next year is where we will start off with four-wheelers — electric trucks in the metros — but we are looking at options on the big gear around hydrogen and electric, so we are talking to Scania about their battery electric trucks.
“What is the payback and what is payload? Payload is a lot of it. If you lose three or four tonne, by the time you put that across ten trucks then you’ve got another truck in the mix, so that’s not achieving a lot.
“We are not jumping ahead to be the leaders in the industry,” says Nafiz. “We are moving forwards, but we are doing our research to make wise investment decisions — not just to showcase we are clean and green.”
Meanwhile Mainstream is building for the future investing in new purpose-built depots, having completed two in Palmerston North and Whangarei.
Says Greg: “We’re about to build in Te Rapa, Tauranga, Nelson, and Cromwell. We already own the land. There will be others after that. It’s part of a big refresh.
“All the new depots we’re building are having heavy cabling put in to carry the type of current you’ll need to charge all the different types of vehicles at night so that goes along with the green building that we are doing. We are looking at solar panels on roofs of buildings and storing that power during the day to supplement the charging at night. And we’re looking at the roofs of trucks. Can they be solar panels without too much of a weight penalty?”
So where does this growth stop? “I keep asking myself that,” says Greg. “One day I’d like to go out fishing more often. I think if I’m making money where it’s all going and then I see something large with the Mainstream name on it roll past me and I think, okay.”
The Halidays have made some time for themselves. There’s a picture of Greg on the cover of a fishing magazine in his office, along with others of his and Diane’s cars on the cover of hot rod magazines. Greg has built up a collection of 24 cars but now plans to slim it down to 14 or so.
In the previous article, Greg pointed out that Mainstream, from its position as a second-tier operator, was capable of doing some of the things the ‘big guys’ did. So, is the company now one of the big guys?
“Are we one of those guys?” Greg ponders. “I had somebody ring me recently and say to us we are a ‘tier one company’. I never thought about us being tier one. Are we tier one? Yeah, we are still considerably smaller than a couple of our competitors, but we are tier one as far as our abilities go absolutely — and the market now knows that.” T&D
