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Triton Express FEATURE
Catch us if you can: How Triton Is Setting The Marker
Leading road transporter Triton Express is powered by advanced technology, customer-first service and a role model staff culture. Colin Chinery talks with Joint CEO Eric Corbishley. 2
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K
eep on Trucking. No nation has more reason to echo the title of the 70s hit than South Africa whose economy turns upon the axles of its freight transport system. Triton Express is among the great movers: 200 trucks serving 1600 clients from bases at 10 major centres from Cape Town to Polokwane. Last year its fleet clocked 10,675,645 km throughout South Africa. This year it is likely to top 12,250,000 km. Triton’s client range is wide and diverse, from auto manufacturers to plastics; from golf clubs to the computer sector. Major brands such as the big supermarkets are avoided. A decision made from experience or observation? “More from observation,” says joint CEO Eric Corbishley. “Big name brands are very price sensitive and everybody’s trying to climb aboard. Our biggest client represents only 5 percent of our business.” Corbishley took charge of the company in 1992 shortly before it almost went bankrupt after an overnight runner blew a motor. At that point there were 25 staff. Today Triton employs 765 and has a turnover of R250 million. This massive and rising growth is powered in part by unequalled customer service and advanced technology. Triton Express offers an overnight and 48-hour service, dependant on destination, Economy Road Freight, Same Day Express Air, and Overnight Express Air. “We are very focused on service. We’ve always believed that we should deliver a superior performance rate, and it’s not negotiable that we deliver on time. At present our service level is running at 99 percent.” Triton has entered into service level agreements with strategic partners in each major town. “For some small rural towns, deliveries are sub-contracted, with Triton taking the consignments to our nearest hub. But overall we affect 95 percent of all deliveries ourselves. We’ve got one of the www.southafricamag.com
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Triton Express FEATURE
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most modern fleets in the country with strict replacement cycles, one of the cleanest in South Africa.” IT investment is central to Triton’s expanding client base, with parcels scanned at the point of collection and tracked across route. As a result both large account holders and individual customers can view the progress of their consignments by logging into a Triton website. The recent introduction of portable scanners has further enhanced Triton’s operation and reputation. “We are probably the only road freight company in South Africa that runs these e-mobile devices,” says Corbishley, 40. ”Installed on every one of our vehicles it means that the customer electronically signs on the screen and this comes on to our internet track and trace system within five minutes.
“It routes the driver from collection to collection and over a period of time we know the ETA from point to point and what the traffic patterns are. “We track and trace every single consignment. And for every consignment that we fail we give a reason. We are completely transparent with our customers. They can go on to our internet business online and we can tell them exactly how many consignments we failed, why we failed them and in which areas.” The main challenge facing the road transport sector says Eric Corbishley is the shortage and quality of drivers. “You battle to get good experienced drivers. “The way we get around it on our long distance routes is to pay our drivers around four times the going council rate. On our local vehicles we run at about 97 percent of our authorised driving posts.”
From junior level upwards our staff are incentivised
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Triton Express FEATURE
A recurring question: why in a nation with high unemployment is it so difficult to recruit and train? “A lot of people are uneducated and actually don’t want to work. Then again many don’t want to become drivers, and this is actually a worldwide problem. So you need to attract them by paying superior wages.” Paradoxically another challenge comes from the opposite direction. “You have a lot of cheap operators who run 20-25 year old vehicles and compete the whole time and erode our client base. They undercut rates by half, underpay their drivers and in effect are operating illegally. There is a huge problem with policing the legal system in South Africa.” The World Cup brought revenue and publicity to South Africa but an ensuing absenteeism threatened and in some cases damaged business efficiency. “We had an incentive scheme from May to the end of July for our drivers and assistants where they got an extra cheque if there had been no absenteeism. But it turned out pretty OK and for the month of July we were about 8 percent down on our budgeted turnover which was fairly acceptable.” Less acceptable is the Joburg road-tolling coming into operation next year. “This will be quite a challenge for us and it will affect our overheads by half a million a month. The toll system rates discussed are quite exorbitant.” If unrivalled customer service and technology are reasons for Triton Express’s reputation and growth, so too is its corporate culture, with managementstaff relationships and personnel training at the core. “We spend a significant amount on training, this financial year around R1.5
million. We try to grow everybody from within, upskilling our drivers into admin positions for example. And right throughout the company we run training courses from junior to senior management level. “Triton is also a very young company. We have a very open door policy; anybody can come in and approach us at any time. We don’t believe in a pyramid structure. “Senior managers are involved in backto-basics programmes, getting back to the floor, staying in touch with how the business operates, and communicating with all staff. Everyone is treated as a human. We are all on first name terms, with no ‘misters’ or ‘sirs’. We’ve got a fantastic culture.” Financial reward is another part of this culture. “From junior level upwards our staff are incentivised, first of all on service levels and also on profit. We are very open, so that a junior operations manager will know exactly what our financial status is and what profits we are making. “We have share schemes for managers, and what we call an employee recognition scheme for people we want to keep but have perhaps reached their ceiling.” Over a five-year period the company sets aside a percentage of pay over and above salary. This is also linked to company profits and paid out in years three, four and five. “So we retain their services and it’s an incentive for them.” Corbishley wants Triton to grow around 20 percent per annum. “This year we did a turnover of R250 million and we are hoping for R300 million the next financial year and after that probably grow at between 15 and 18 percent. “Having said that we are in a recession so nobody knows. We
Our pledge to our clients is absolute – we deliver to you both superior systems and a fantastic service
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won’t sacrifice profit, so if it means we have to grow slightly slower and retain the rates, that’s what we will do. We won’t grow for the sake of growing at the wrong rates.” His view on the South African economy? “Well it’s a hell of a lot better than the British economy. We’ve been pretty lucky on riding on the wave of the World Cup and you are still seeing a lot of construction going on.” Meantime that economy continues to power on its trucking, now accounting for 90 percent of South Africa’s freight movement. And Triton Express is confident of its own and distinctive role. “Young and energetic, we are here to serve. When it comes to prompt, efficient and professional distribution of freight within all major commercial centres throughout South Africa, we are the specialists. Our pledge to our clients is absolute – we deliver to you both superior systems and a fantastic service.” END
D & H Deliveries, your specialist third party carrier in KwaZulu Natal, are proud to be associated with the success story of
TriTon ExprEss and look forward to growing with them in the future Contact Darryl Ouzman on 083 626 9701 or phone 031-7004684 for details.
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