14 minute read
Stay Frosty
Brisbane-based company SEQ Ice Cream frequently sends out a fleet of commercial vehicles to service an area the size of Venezuela. It counts on the new Hino 500 Series Standard Cab trucks to ensure it’s hot products are delivered on time and always ice cold.
Vision Tracking is installed on all of the new Hino 500s.
Edwin Street first used a cart and later a one-horsepower motorbike to deliver his ice cream, mostly to neighbours in the Wollongong suburb of Corrimal, when he started out in 1920. A century later, the products of Streets, along with Vermont ice-cream brand Ben & Jerrys, are ferried around by SEQ Ice Cream on a growing fleet of commercial vehicles, in which, Hino is presently the exclusive truck brand of choice. SEQ Ice Cream has been the Unilever distribution arm since 2015. Proof of its growth strategy can be seen in operations. In the past five years they have doubled the size of the business and that is also reflected in the fleet which now operates twice as many trucks including ten Hino 500 Series vehicles, seven of which can be considered new purchases. The first installment of these were delivered in May with another three already on order. The refrigerated bodies are built by Brisbane company Scully RSV who have a longstanding commercial partnership with Hino and Sci Fleet Hino. Powered with Thermo King T1000 units, the bodies are commonly specified for a 6- and 8-pallet payload, although a smaller vehicle is deployed in the denser Brisbane metropolitan area where it is more suited. A 10-pallet van is currently being built in time for summer
when demand surges. Deliveries cover a geographical expanse more than half the size of Queensland. These will take the trucks as far north as Rockhampton, out west as far as Longreach and south to Grafton in New South Wales. All told, the trucks cover a territory equivalent to Venezuela. Within that region around 3,500 customers are called upon. SEQ Ice Cream provides full service for all aspects of the route trade. This includes all customers where ice cream is commonly sold such as movie theatres, beach kiosks, petrol stations, general stores, IGAs, clubs, pubs, cafes, school canteens, public pools and other leisure outlets. In short, anywhere that is not a Woolworths or Aldi. Generally, most customers receive a delivery once a week and as high as three times a week depending on their volume requirements. SEQ Ice Cream Director Don Mackaness says the latest vehicles, which he looks to Scully for expertise on front and rear axle weights, body configurations and horsepower, all feature an automatic transmission. “Operationally, they provide a smoother experience. There’s less concern for driver error and maintenance of equipment. The decision was made in part also with a view to their future resale value more than strictly performance,” he says. “Resale with an automatic transmission is between five to ten per cent higher than a manual.” On average the trucks cover between 100 and 300 kilometres a day. The longest job currently scheduled involves the 650 kilometre return leg from Grafton. Vision Tracking is installed on all trucks. This allows operations to monitor the working conditions of the truck including temperature of each vehicle, which must be maintained at -22 Celsius and to track the location of the fleet. Prior to the trucks being sent on dispatch, daily orders, collated by the telesales team, are dumped onto a route optimisation system called PTV
Shaun Chandler.
Shaun Chandler SEQ Ice Cream, Operations Manager
Smartour. The logistics desk plans out each route assessing metrics for distance to travel, sales and number of drops in order to set out the most efficient use of resources for the day. “For us it’s about getting the best, most optimised routing sequencing done for each of the trucks to limit the resource allocation and maximise delivery efficiencies,” says Don. “The drops to customers in a particular territory are broken up based on the trips required. We want to apportion the GSV evenly among the 15 trucks going by moving the load from one vehicle to another.” The process behind it ensures the company accounts for each delivery as they happen and returns its drivers to the depot within an expected time frame and all of it with high accuracy. “We generally can tell by the afternoon prior what time all our trucks should be back the following workday,” Don says. “So if Smartour tells us we’re doing an eight hour day generally there will be a 30 minute threshold in that example.” With the sequencing of vehicle movements predicated on auto generated telesales the trucks complete weekly, fortnightly and monthly deliveries. Having taken over an existing Hino fleet, the team at SEQ Ice Cream saw it appropriate to continue on with the brand for consistency and maintenance. The new Hino 500 Series Standard Cab delivers in the key areas of driveability and reliability according to Operations
Vehicle Stability Control is a valued safety feature on the Hino 500 series.
Manager Shaun Chandler. “The active safety suite features speed alerts, Lane Departure Warning, Autonomous Emergency Braking, the latest sensor technology that I see on my new car,” he says. “Smart systems like Vehicle Stability Control, traction control
and the like reassure the logistics team that the drivers will get to where they are going on time.” On occasion Shaun will operate one of the vehicles, but is more accustomed to driving a keyboard for his role these days. As a personal preference he does favour a manual transmission when in the saddle on a delivery. Having greater confidence in the new Hino 500 Series trucks, when considering the geographical task asked of them, is no small recompense. “The standout characteristic of the Hinos for me is how reliable they have been,” he says. “In five years we haven’t had to rescue anyone from the road.” Logistics staff draw from an 800 pallet cold store, situated directly opposite head office in the port suburb of Hemmant, just 20 minutes from the CBD. Its close proximity to the Gateway Bridge makes it ideal for a logistics business. The northside of the bridge feeds traffic to the Sunshine Coast and the south provides a direct route to its other main market on the Gold Coast. The total workforce is accounted for by 40 employees a cross the warehouse, administration, sales department and truck drivers. As the fleet is already on-road at 4.30am it doesn’t suffer from traffic disruptions now prone to last mile services in most
major metropolitan areas in Australia. In general, the drivers are returning to Brisbane by mid-afternoon. “Those extremities aren’t an issue because all the traffic is going the other way,” Don says. “We’re generally travelling against the traffic. We’re coming back from the Gold Coast or Sunshine Coast in the afternoon when everyone is heading out, say, on a Friday afternoon or holiday period.” It makes sense, given the nature of the product, that SEQ Ice Cream works on a call schedule split between summer and winter. Just as the core of the business is based around Brisbane, many people, however, will go on holidays to the outer lying coastal areas. “That is a great balancer for the business because generally when everyone comes back to school and work in the Brisbane area the business is quite busy and when everyone goes on holidays the other extremities are busy,” Don says. “From a resource point of view we get a reasonable balance
Shaun, who spends most of his time now in the office, will occasionally drive one of the trucks.
Don Mackaness SEQ Ice Cream, Director
there. It works well. Generally, we would increase those delivery frequencies during summer based on demand. We will still call customers nearly as regularly, but the volume of drops would increase as would the volume of delivery numbers that sales value going out each day.” Don, who holds both a Bachelor of Applied Science and an MBA, moved to Brisbane five years ago after having worked on the Southcoast of NSW for 18 years building up another business. Taking over the Southeast Queensland Operation was contingent on a definitive growth plan. The predicate for this hinged on committing to different boundaries of additional customers and providing better efficiencies with cost savings, for the parent company ofStreets, Unilever. “For what they deliver Hino are certainly a more cost-effective option particularly for a company like ours that works to scale,” Don says. “We’ve got a few trucks on the road so every dollar counts. Hino deliver a quality product at a reasonable price compared to their competitors. I think there’s huge advantages for us when they do a similar or better job than the competitor does at a cheaper price.”
RIDERS I N THE
With a strong emphasis on customer service, Everstin Group caters for a vast range of bulk transport needs. The company recently acquired a Mercedes-Benz Actros tipper matched with a Bulk Transport Equipment five-axle dog.
With a core offering involving the supply and haulage of quarry products, Everstin Group offers a diverse range of services in a 24/7 operation designed to meet the considerable expectations of its customers. In addition to providing local and interstate haulage from its headquarters in Melbourne and branches in Brisbane and Adelaide, the company also stockpiles its own materials to ensure integrity and continuity of supply to its client base. Everstin’s list of services is extensive, including bulk haulage of sand, glass, crushed rock from quarry to site and asphalt for road works. Since its formation in 2006, the firm has also offered demolition services including rubbish removal and land remediation, along with construction services, warehousing, grain storage and pallet racking. Based at Melbourne head office in Hoppers Crossing, Everstin General Manager Ross Winkworth joined the company around three years ago, sensing an ideal opportunity to be a part of a dynamic business that was on the way up. Ross comes from a logistics background and was previously employed as Commercial Manager-Logistics by O-I Australia, a glass bottle manufacturing company that was recently acquired by Visy. “Opportunity calls and I am excited to be a part of Everstin and to have seen it grow from a smaller company into the medium-sized business it is today,” Ross says. “I have enjoyed the chance to get my hands dirty and to play a part in that growth — that’s been the key motivation for me.” Ross says the business has diversified while staying true to its roots in tipper and tanker work, having built up its workshop and engineering capabilities in a value-adding effort for its existing clients. This includes the addition
Mercedes-Benz 2658 with five-axle dog.
CHARIOT
of warehousing for clients who had previously received point-to-point transport from the company. Everstin offers another service in which it caters to various concrete companies including ICL where specific materials are imported from overseas. “We’re providing a full-service offering, handling their freight from origin, say Malaysia or North America, taking care of the shipping, wharf cartage to warehouse, decanting and debagging and last mile delivery,” Ross says. These products, he explains, are generally niche materials including industrial minerals used in specialty cements as well as limestone and sand products. With a large chunk of the business revolving around the safe and efficient transport of bulk commodities, it’s hardly surprising that Everstin is continually on the lookout for the most suitable trucks for its various applications. The company has around half a dozen Mercedes-Benz trucks in the fleet, ranging from prime movers pulling flattop semis and tankers, through to the latest acquisition being an Actros 2658 towing a five-axle dog trailer. Ross describes the new Actros as a good piece of kit and says the drivers love it. “It’s a great package in terms of pricing, servicing and after-sales support. Because we have a large variety of work, we need to choose the best vehicle for each specific application,” Ross says. “We’ve always had Mercedes-Benz trucks in the tipper fleet and we believe for the truck and dog work the Actros is a very good fit.” He reiterates the value to the company of the full commercial package offered by Daimler Trucks including the five
year warranty, and, more importantly, the safety package, driver comfort, fuel economy and low emissions. “From our perspective for this task you can’t beat it, and they look good too, which also helps,” he says. The Performance-Based Standards (PBS) approval for the five-axle dog to operate in Melbourne, according to Ross, was something of a labour of love. “We have them elsewhere but to have one in Melbourne finally is a really good step forward for us,” he says. “We are pleased that Mercedes-Benz was able to come to the party and help us get it over the line.” After being in service for a few months the new unit has already clocked up more than 40,000km which Ross says is due to the high utilisation which is a hallmark of every truck in the fleet.
Ross Winkworth Everstin General Manager
The aim is to keep the trucks working as much as possible to ensure each asset is providing the best possible return on investment. Ross says the company plans to keep the Actros for five years to make full use of the extended warranty. By that stage, he estimates, it would have travelled close to 500,000km. “That’s the intent anyway,” he says. “But it depends on what’s available at the time and what’s happening in terms of contract arrangements.” As for servicing, Daimler Trucks Laverton has been entrusted to the task and recently performed the first major service on the new Actros. At the present time there are 32 people
BTE built the five-axle dog trailer.
employed at Everstin’s Melbourne headquarters, the majority of whom are drivers, along with four in the office taking care of accounts and management duties, in addition to several mechanics and boilermakers in the workshop and warehouse. “We’re big enough as a company to operate efficiently with economies of scale but still small enough that every employee is known personally,” Ross says. “We still operate like a family company in that regard.” Average tenure of employees is around five to six years while some of the key people in operations – “they’re a wealth of knowledge” per Ross – have been with the company since its inception in 2006. The driver recruitment process is an in-house operation with word-of-mouth
The new unit is PerformanceBased Standards approved.
being the preferred method according to Ross. “We believe we have a bit of a niche with our operation and we have had a lot of referrals through word-of-mouth, and usually they come in threes. You get one driver and then suddenly you have two more who have come from a similar space and area of expertise,” he says. Finding good drivers, particularly in the tipper and dog realm, is generally a greater challenge these days Ross opines. “The turnover of drivers in the industry generally seems to be rather high, which is why we’re pleased that we don’t have a high turnover of drivers, especially in our key positions,” he says. “In particular, experienced truck and dog drivers, those that know the ins and outs of the role, are becoming rare as hen’s teeth.” Ross says the industry is suffering from
a lack of quality training for drivers and that the issues this creates could be having an adverse effect on productivity. He insists that looking after the drivers is the only way to retain the skillset that a professional outfit like Everstin needs. “Our people are the most important asset in the business and we’re fortunate that in the current COVID climate we still have the work to keep them employed,” Ross says. “In fact, this has been the busiest winter period on record for us.” For a transport company, keeping busy enables not only the retention of skilled employees but the purchase of new equipment. Testament to this premise is Everstin’s recent Mercedes-Benz Actros 2658 and BTE five-axle dog acquisition. This, in turn, creates much-needed work for equipment manufacturers and retailers, and so the cycle continues.
