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Gemma Pilbeam: at home<br />
in a Western Star 4900<br />
See page 60<br />
New R450 set for<br />
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See page 76<br />
May-June 2021<br />
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JUNE 2021 #341<br />
26/05/2021 11:05:20 AM<br />
FORWARD VISION<br />
Challenges close to home<br />
An industry set a task on skills and change come to trucking news<br />
ROB McKAY<br />
has been a<br />
journalist for<br />
more than three<br />
decades, with<br />
the last 25 years<br />
focused on<br />
national and<br />
international<br />
freight transport<br />
Right:<br />
The Trader titles<br />
Acommon theme in this edition of <strong>ATN</strong> centres on<br />
the importance of attracting new entrants to the<br />
ranks of truck drivers.<br />
No news there, you would be forgiven for thinking.<br />
After all, the generation crunch had been spoken of for<br />
most of the previous decade.<br />
But there is a difference now, thanks to the Covid-19<br />
pandemic. And it speaks to an economy-wide issue<br />
that the nation blithely ignored until importing workers,<br />
skilled or otherwise, as an easy way out failed exist as<br />
an option.<br />
Make no mistake, this laziness has been endemic<br />
to Australia for decades. Part of the Lucky Country<br />
syndrome. Don’t put skills into youth, poach it from<br />
elsewhere.<br />
This column has complained about it all before.<br />
It is particularly poignant when an operation of the<br />
calibre of Ron Finemore Transport says it has positions<br />
for 70 drivers. How can that sort of thing happen to this<br />
company in this industry in this country?<br />
More so, given its management recognises that the<br />
solution is beyond training youth, wherever they are<br />
hiding, as it’s and the industry’s need is for experience,<br />
right now.<br />
Wistfully gratifying is the effort the Livestock, Bulk<br />
and Rural Carriers Association and members such as<br />
Maloney Livestock Transport put in to encouraging the<br />
best young drivers to continue to excel.<br />
Speaking of encouragement, it was brought to our<br />
attention that Sally Tipping, of Tipping’s Transport and<br />
Wave To A Truckie fame, is lauding the virtues of its new<br />
recruit, a young Sikh man named Aman, not least his<br />
“awesome attitude” but also his aptitude as a driver.<br />
Given the depth of structural problem of skills and<br />
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training, all possible solutions must be explored until<br />
the nation sees sense. There is no choice. But we will be<br />
setting ourselves up for another really bad fall if we don’t<br />
take this seriously and change our ways.<br />
A bit of state and federal leadership wouldn’t go<br />
astray here but it has been in pitifully short supply in the<br />
transport and skills portfolios for decades.<br />
Let’s not forget, this is an economy-wide malaise, with<br />
freight transport merely one of the worst examples. A<br />
national vulnerability demands a national attention.<br />
So, yes, we must import the right people when we<br />
finally can. Yes, we must steer the youth that is willing<br />
into the industry. Yes, they must be provided with<br />
trucks they’d want to drive. Yes, pay them more, or else<br />
someone else will. Because unplanned wage inflation<br />
is one of the economy’s punishments for bungling and<br />
complacency at the highest levels.<br />
And, yes, when we get good young people coming<br />
in, we must encourage them as generously and<br />
wholeheartedly as possible. At least as much as we<br />
celebrate more mature achievers.<br />
Meanwhile, this column would have begun with a paen<br />
to the demands and rewards of change but the Australian<br />
Trucking Association’s Emily Mills grabbed that option<br />
in the Industry Voice column when highlighting the<br />
upcoming Technology and Maintenance Conference.<br />
For change is afoot for <strong>ATN</strong> and its sister publications<br />
in what was once known as the Trader stable.<br />
Trader was part of the business private equity (PE) firm<br />
Mercury Capital bought from Germany’s Bauer publishing<br />
house last September before rebranding it Are Media.<br />
Last month, Trader was sold as “non-core” to Prime<br />
Creative Media (PCM) in an ultimately brisk transaction.<br />
Though PE has its place and is not without its<br />
successes, this column is no fan, particularly in transport<br />
and logistics but also publishing.<br />
This writer arrived at Trader when it was battling<br />
to recover post-Global Financial Crisis from PE<br />
depredations and the most-recent and first-hand<br />
experience was entirely disappointing.<br />
Unlike the Hamburg-headquartered Bauer Group, from<br />
which Mercury picked up Trader for a pittance compared<br />
with the deal that brought Trader and co-owned<br />
consumer glossies in Sydney, Prime is an industry and<br />
business publishing firm that knows what it is getting.<br />
It is no secret that PCM and Trader have competed<br />
fiercely in realms that their publications have overlapped.<br />
As <strong>ATN</strong> goes to press, the enlarged and strengthened<br />
PCM is getting to grips with its greatest acquisition.<br />
That, too, is a challenge and an opportunity – not just<br />
for the new owner but for all concerned.<br />
6 <strong>ATN</strong> July 2021 FULLYLOADED.COM.AU
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