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Judge gives stern warning to transport operators

This from the NBR last week.

Road transport haulage operators have been given a clear message by a High Court Judge: Overload your vehicles at your peril.

In a reserved judgment handed down at the High Court in Hamilton, Justice Lyn Stevens said the country loses $100 million a year in unpaid or under paid road user charges.

...

The judgment entirely debunked a widely held transport industry belief that enforcement officers allow a five percent weight tolerance over and above the licence purchased.

Justice Stevens made his comments in the case of Mt Maunganui transport operator TD Haulage which was appealing a District Court assessment that the company owed $1.215 million in short paid road user charges.

...

In the end, it is not known what TD Haulage was required to pay to settle the matter because a confidential settlement was reached been the parties during the appeal. But Justice Stevens closed the case by delivering a judgment anyway, using it to sternly warn the industry of its shortcomings.

Australia T&L

One of the things that Aussie are doing well is in combining their industry recruitment and branding under one umbrella organization.

They brand themselves as T&L.

This includes Road Transport, Logistics, Warehousing, Rail, Sea, Air. Anything but self loading freight. Check out a Virtual Careers Expo they have set-up at Virtual Careers.

This sort of collective behavior is seriously lacking in NZ.

The year ahead...

I think there is little doubt that the economy is slowing.  Christmas spending, and therefore transport volumes, where very late. Figures just out from show that Retail EFTPOS transactions are down in January.

Add to that an election year and high fuel and interest rates and it can only but slow down.

This is further reinforced by a quote I read in the Herald about Freightways result.

"In the current operating environment of low organic volume growth and rising costs, Freightways has been careful to continue to make decisions for the long term good of the business," the company said.

"As such, our investment in facilities, technology, customer service initiatives and most importantly in the training and development of our people has continued."

I agree with Freightways. Training, Development [and retention] are critical tis year.

Climate change cost?

I read this article in the October truck and driver magazine and thought I would post an excerpt here:

The biggest risk to the transport sector arising from climate change won’t be the change itself … but poorly-based Government polices, New Zealand Institute of Economic Research director Brent Layton told the RTF Conference.

“If the policy changes to deal with climate change are well thought through, aimed at minimising greenhouse gas emissions at minimum cost to the economy, applied evenly to different business sectors and are formulated so as to not reduce NZ’s competitiveness compared with other countries, then their impact is likely to be modest – and the impact on the road transport industry likewise. ...

“There are increasing signs that policy advisers seem keener to offer advice that is acceptable to the Government rather than giving the best advice. Finally, there is the strong political interest locally in emission control, so of it manifesting itself as an urge to see NZ leading the charge to save the world.

On the transport-specific front, climate change and environment issues seem to be a magnet for people that feel that cars, and by association trucks, are obviously bad, so that something which is against there use is obviously good.

The worry is that we’ll end up with NZ instituting polices that lead globally, but end up tilting the playing field unevenly. A subsidy for biofuels is example of this type of approach.”

I agree with what Brent is saying. There seems to be this ground swell of opinion that we need to lead the world in being green. But at what cost?

People really don’t want to look at climate change objectively.

“It is the trucks fault and trucking companies need to fix it … dirty smelly trucks” seems to be the feeling and yet the same people demand more and more consumer choice (which means more and more trucks). The same people jump on a 747, which uses 16 tonnes of fuel just to take off (The equivalent of running six cars for a year).

It is convenient to point the finger at just the transport industry. Then it is not my problem.

The solution needs to be found in a holistic approach to the supply chain. Something I fear (know) our government will not do.

 

Infrastructure Rant – Part 2

I was on the North Shore last night and I saw all the work and expense going into the bus lanes. I wondered how many people are actually going to use the bus when the are bus lanes?

I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if they had decided to put rail in instead. If they had decided to close two lanes of the Harbour Bridge and make it rail. (I know it is probably not technically possible due to the incline but bear with me).

Suddenly you are sitting in 3 lanes on the harbour bridge rather than 4, watching the trains fly by. Would you then look at catching a train tomorrow if you really don’t need your car at work?

You bet!

Quickly transport movements are freed up and productivity improves.

Steve W raised 2 really valid points to my last post.
1) Auckland is an isthmus. In my view this further drives the need to act now, as it takes longer to make tunnels and bridges.
2) The second crossing needs to be joint rail and road. I agree if it doesn’t have rail and connection into southern rail network Auckland is stuffed.

Finally, in my last post I said that strong leadership is needed. Ideally that would come in the form of one strong leader with the desire and mandate to fix the problem.

The problem in Auckland is far greater than that however. There is no one body that really controls Auckland. The councils are often out to protect their interests rather than collaboratively work together. Even when they have the right intentions and start working together it appears Central Government and Transit slow the process to a grinding halt.

What’s needed, in my view?
Either, one regional council that combines all of the councils. This makes the most sense for the long-term planning and productivity of Auckland, but I suspect will take 3 – 5 years too long to really happen and will only be a half hearted attempt.

Or Central Government appointed relentless leadership (not a commission of inquiry or working party) who have the legal mandate to steam roll Transit and the councils with clear short-term goals to make it happen.

 

Infrastructure Rant – Part 1

We need strong, long term leadership to fix Aucklands problems and we need it now!

The most noticeable thing to me when I first hit Melbourne was the infrastructure!

They actually have a transport infrastructure.

They have a motorway from the airport to the city and beyond. You can get everywhere in the city by Train, Tram or Bus. You can pick-up a rental car in the centre of Melbourne at 8:30 in the morning drive aimlessly around the central city and get onto a motorway in 10 minutes. Even as I left the city the inbound traffic was mildly congested, maybe 10 minutes slower than normal.

Compare that to Auckland with a population half the size.

The second thing I notice is that when they decide to build a road. They build it. They work around the clock to make it happen (Oh, that means they get lots done at night when the traffic is not around) If it is a critical road they pull out all the stops with the consent process and push it through.

Compare that to Auckland. The Greenlane intersection (which is outside our Auckland Office) will take 9 months longer to complete, will be have grown in cost from $14 million to $26 million dollars.

I was in Auckland this week and there was no work happening on it at all. What would I expect? After all it was the school holidays and traffic is lighter so it makes perfect sense to do nothing.

“Almost finished the upgrading of the Green Lane intersection” is the first transport highlight that Dick Hubbard sights on his website as a reelection highlight. 9 months late and $12 millions dollars over spent. Now that’s a highlight.

I know that not all cities in Australia have the infrastructure and planning that Melbourne has. But at least when they decide it is needed. They do something. In New Zealand we talk and talk and talk and talk. But nothing happens. Nothing.

Auckland in all reality is not any better off than it was 15 years ago when I joined the industry. No light rail, no real improvement to inner city traffic.

If we want to continue to grow as a country. We need strong leaders that will make it happen.

I find it all quiet disheartening and can see why 2,000 people a week head off to Aussie.

 

Log Book & Work Time Changes

Below is a brief video that Agoge Training has made to summarise the changes in Logbook and Work time rules effective 1 October 2007. If you would like a free high quality copy please contact Jim on 0800 42 46 43.

Transport & Logistics Bodies

One of the most noticeable elements of the Australian T&L seen is the fact that so many of the industry bodies are actually working together.

The have a body called the Australia Logistics Council which is a government and industry partnership to raise the profile of the T&L industry. They deal with all modes of transport and logistics except self loading transport (an Aussie term for passenger transport).

This body along with its many partner bodies has developed the T&L brand. They realised that everyone calls Transport, Road Transport, Aviation, Logistics, Supply Chain by different names. This dilutes the industry and most people think it is just smelly old truck drivers.

T&L is a brand aimed at encouraging younger people into the industry. T&L incorporates Rail, Warehousing, Road Transport, Stevedoring, Transport Administration and Logistics, Aviation and Maritime.

The also have a strong push to get more women involved in the industry.

The lesson for NZ is simple: We (Road Transport, Warehousing, Maritime) are competing against each other for the same pool of people rather than working together to make the industry more appealing to young people.

There is career path in T&L.

In fact I think we should use T&L to describe the industry in NZ. I’m sure the Aussies wont mind, they steel most of our stuff.

Transport & Logistics (NZ vs Aussie)

Greetings from Freight Week 2007 in Melbourne. I thought I would start my reports on the week by giving you a quick insight into Transport & Logistics in Australia.

Firstly, Australia has some very similar issues to New Zealand.
• The average age of their drivers is 48 (NZ in their 50’s)
• They are struggling to be seen to be sexy enough to attract Gen Y’s and now Gen Alpha.
• They have reasonably high interest rates (although they are 2% below NZ)
• The cost of fuel is high.
• Unemployment is at all time lows.
• The industry is going to double by 2020.

Next, they actually bundle all of transport and logistics (T&L) together and I’ll post more on that later. In Victoria alone they have 330,000 people employed in T&L and it makes up 14% of the Gross State Product. Nationally, T&L employs 4.5% of the Aussie workforce, is 15% of GDP and the industry contributes A$76 billion to the ecomony.

Finally, the Linfox CEO spoke at lunch and said they would not be acquiring much in the next 18 months (He said they are preparing for large Asian acquisitions) Anyway the issues they face in the next 18months is higher fuel rates and higher interest rates, and they appear to be preparing to weather the storm of a slowing economy.

All in all, a very interesting day yesterday and I came away with a few ideas about what NZ could do better to improve the Transport & Logistics employer brand.

RFID tags

There are a lot more issues for supply chain companies that are looking at implementing RFID into their process than just the cost of the tag.

They need to consider investment in technology, current system integration, and the bandwidth to handle huge volumes of tags in one spot (like a truck driving through a entrance, and a reader capturing all tags)

Back in 2003 the Auto ID Centre in the US did some predictions on the price of RFID tags into the market place.

It is interesting to look at the chart produced by the Centre almost 5 years ago. They envisaged two scenarios: (1) By 2008, EPC tags have come close to reaching the mythical "5-cent" tag, and there would be "fast adoption"; (2) tag prices stay higher, and there is "moderate adoption.”

Clearly the adoption of RFID has been slower than expected and at best is their second prediction.  We are a while away before we really see RFID become a significant force in the tracking of products.

NB: RFID means Radio-frequency identification (see wiki) and are small tags that generate a genreally unique radiowave, which can be read by devices without having to scan bar code etc. Some tags can be read from several meters away and beyond the line of sight of the reader.

  Hattip: SCDigest