7 minute read
GETTING TO THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME
GETTING TO THE RIGHT PLACE
AT THE RIGHT TIME
It is one of the core principles behind running a trucking operation, simple enough to say and not so easy to do well, and that is ensuring the freight is getting to the right place at the right time. Tim Giles meets an operator who has grown his business by following this rule to the letter.
Operating out of a small depot in the southern Brisbane suburb of Meadowbrook and covering a freight route stretching from SE Queensland all the away West to Charleville, and beyond, Maney Transport has carved out a niche by providing a reliable freight service out to a string of towns along the route.
Tony Maney started out as an owner/ driver working from his home in Meadowbrook back in 1975. He began as a sub-contractor for Mayne Nickless, as many other trucking businesses did at that time. He would also source work from other transport companies and developed a newspaper run out into the Darling Downs.
As his business matured Tony began working for the McPhees operation, which is where he learnt a lot of the principles he lives by today in his business, of doing the job right, being well organised and emphasising customer service. From an owner driver he grew to need premises in Bethania before starting at this current site six years ago after outgrowing that facility.
It was only about ten years ago that Tony started to concentrate on overnight freight out of Brisbane along the ‘Western Corridor’ through Toowoomba, Dalby, Chinchilla, Roma and Charleville. He was already very familiar with the area, as this was the route his paper trucks were servicing at the time. Tony saw the newspaper delivery business starting to wane along the route, but could see the rising demand for overnight freight delivery.
One of their customers was looking for a regular overnight service into the region, so Tony took the opportunity to make the operation swing over from the declining newspaper work into developing the local delivery side of the business. The task was servicing the corridor either side of the Warrego Highway heading West across Queensland. In the beginning five trucks were enough to carry the freight and cover all of the different drop off points.
“It was bare bones at the start,” says Tony. “But we had other work to keep us going for the first 18 months. We were running six nights a week.”
The regular run to Roma/grew organically over time, to be followed by another out to Goondiwindi, for the same original customer. Further drops were added in as the operation grew and now a full trailer will run regularly out to Charleville. The number of towns with a guaranteed overnight service grew and the smaller settlements in between and beyond were serviced regularly.
THE TRUCKS The fleet has now grown to 20 body trucks, five prime movers, 12 trailers and ten utes and vans. Most of the body trucks are based in SE Queensland hauling freight into the depot for onward transport to the west or performing pick up and delivery work from the Toowoomba and Roma depots.
The fleet is supplemented by a number of rental vehicles from Penske Truck Rental. When a new run comes on board, a rental will be used to assess what the route will need in the long run, in terms of truck. Sometimes a rental truck works out well enough to be left on a particular
Tony Maney Stareted Maney Transport back in 1975.
route over the long term. The fleet also includes a couple of rental prime movers to supplement the regular trucks and allow for expansion of the fleet, if needed.
“Predominantly for our distance work, our trucks are Scanias, all on a lease,” says Tony. “It’s a fixed cost and you can factor that in and you can deal with it. I just know that a particular truck is going to cost me so much every month. If something goes wrong, it’s still going to cost so much every month. Our local body trucks are older and some bigger long distance trucks have come back into the yard to do local work.”
Trailers are loaded in Meadowbrook and Toowoomba for further West using a method with a great deal of flexibility built into it. The freight coming into the depot has to be assessed and loaded as it arrives to maximise use of the available load space or make the decision to load a trailer rather than a rigid truck.
“18 months ago we were only running single trailers and now we are just about running B-doubles every night,” says Tony. “There’s a lot more demand for freight than there was when we first started, and we have established ourselves a bit better now. I think we have got a fairly good name out there.”
Working in these remote areas there is a certain amount of co-operation going on between rival carriers. If there is a piece of freight destined for an area serviced by a rival, some swapping of freight between them can cut down on kilometres travelled and time taken over these massive distances.
THE PEOPLE The business now employs 70 people across the three depots, the majority based at Meadowbrook.
“It’s not easy getting people to work in the business,” say Tony. “Once you get hold of a good employee, you got to make sure you keep hold of them. We’ve been bringing people up through the business. A couple of our line-haul drivers started off driving vans and body trucks for us. Young people aren’t attracted to the industry, but you can’t blame them for that.
“We’ve got a good bunch of people here. I am fortunate to have a good team, good operational people, good accounts team and good HR. Everybody works well together.
This change in the nature of the operation has seen a small high speed, night time paper delivery service, a part of the industry with a colourful reputation, transform into a modern safety conscious enterprise meeting compliance rules and customer expectations, as well as meeting the high standard of service needs of large clients.
“Everything is monitored, and everything is tracked,” says Tony. “We use the Scania system, and then another one, Fleet Complete, in the rest of the trucks. Our trailers are curtain siders , but we do have some flat-tops. A lot of the time the trailers are running as B-doubles.
“In terms of freight, we never know what we’ve got, for that night until about 3.30 in the afternoon. Then we have to decide, what’s going where and then load, and get it out. It’s a very busy part of the day.
“90 per cent of our freight is outbound, so there’s very little comes back in. We might send five trailers out at night and then only have six pallets spaces coming back in. It’s all one way traffic really. You’ve got to get it all going one way.”
At the heart of the business are three people working in the schedulers office, who are fielding incoming calls, arranging pick ups and feeding the information into the system. Maney’s are now using the TransVirtual system with the customers able to access services via a web portal and all of the drivers armed with PDAs in the truck cabin to keep them up to date and scan consignments at the pick up point.
“The drivers can set the route if they want to,” say Tony. “They just have a list on the PDA and they can go through it to suit themselves. We tend to keep the local drivers in one area so they get to know their routes. There are about eight to ten runs in Brisbane, divided up in their areas. It helps them to build up a rapport with the customers.”
The business handles everything from from large industrial components to a small parcel or jiffy bag, but no foodstuffs or refrigerated.
In many parts of Australia, this kind of operation seems to be able to thrive, while the large corporates are not interested in such a high mileage, low margin business being part of their portfolio.
There is growth to be had in this sector of the trucking market. On the first night Maney’s loaded out of its current depot, six years ago, there was a body truck and mezzanine deck trailer loading out. Now it’s common for five B-doubles to hit the highway in the early evening.
“Once you get hold of a good employee, you got to make sure you keep hold of them,” says Tony Maney.
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