64 | TRANSPORT Brentwood Transport Pandemic proves a rollercoaster ride Ange Davidson The Brentwood Transport warehouse in Lower Hutt. Most people had never heard of supply chain management before the Covid pandemic left their goods languishing in an overseas port for months on end, nor have too many people lost sleep thinking about how the goods they consume on a daily basis get from point A to point B. Road transport is an unsung hero as nearly everything we consume or require for business is carted by road, from port to warehouse, from business to customer. It’s an understatement to say Covid has challenged the industry and that effects of the global pandemic will be felt for many years to come. Ian Lyall, owner of Brentwood Transport in Wellington, has experienced first-hand the difficulties of running a freight company in a pandemic. Long delays in getting supply into the country are compounded by shipments all arriving at once creating backlogs. “Containers used to be spread out over the year with no problems, then suddenly there were no containers landing for six weeks followed by 20 containers arriving in one week. It poses all sorts of staffing issues. Businesses are still catching up two years later, although it is starting to even out now,” says Ian. During the first Covid lockdown in 2020, Brentwood Transport went from 20 vehicles on the road every day to only two vehicles working with essential deliveries. In the last week of lockdown, Fisher & Paykel, a key customer, was deemed an essential service and they were back to running one truck a day from Auckland. “Our customers still have a huge cost problem to move product around the country. We try to do what’s right for the customers that we’ve had for a long time, but you do have to pass charges on. We’re a small business and have a great customer base, so we want to do right by them,” he says. Natural Sugar, one of Brentwood Transport’s biggest customers, has product landing at Tauranga Port in one tonne bulk bags that need shipping around the country to customers with contract supply agreements such as Whittaker’s. Delays through Covid and rapidly rising fuel prices have significantly increased these delivery costs and many wholesalers struggle to increase their prices in the short term to cover expenses. “Our fuel bill nearly doubled within a threeweek period, and it’s really hard to pass that onto customers in such a short amount of time. We carried the cost for a while but then you just have to pass it onto the customer,” says Ian. The government’s reduction in RUC costs has helped but Ian says these savings are minimal compared to increased fuel costs. “They’re saying that they’ll be taking the subsidy off the RUC in January next year, but they’ll be plenty of lobbying to stop this happening.” Ian runs a fleet of 23 trucks in a range of sizes from small canopy trucks for around the city to truck and trailers. They are predominately a local carrier around Wellington with a daily run from Auckland for Fisher & Paykel products. A move towards electric vehicles is on the cards, especially for vans which may only do 100 km around the city in a day and can be charged overnight. Rail is cheaper than road transport but it’s a lot slower to deliver, a situation that has got worse since the pandemic. A world-wide shortage of containers is compounding the backlog in shipping. Product is sitting in warehouses around the globe which adds to the supply chain issue. Ian has customers whose product has taken 10 months to arrive when the wait time used to be six weeks. “How do you forecast for that? We’ve had a similar experience with a new truck we purchased that took 18 months to get into the country, plus there’s a seven month wait to get the body built here in New Zealand. You just have to take the punt and carry on,” he says. “This is something we’ve never experienced before in our lifetime, and it’s not just Wellington or New Zealand. It’s global and there’s no quick fix. Every business is affected but we’ve got through the worst of it and things are only going to get better.” “Our fuel bill nearly doubled within a three-week period, and it’s really hard to pass that onto customers in such a short amount of time.”
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