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Finding my way around

When I flew into Melbourne this week I knew broadly my hotel was in the Southbank area, so caught a bus, then the train, then walked around looking for it. Most people, I would assume, would actually look it up on a map.

When I went to the conference yesterday, I knew it was at the Tennis grounds. Again forgot to look it up, so just followed my nose.

Last night tried to lead some friends to a great place to eat. Failed completely, and got sore legs walking around the city, then ended up back near were we started.

Then I realised, that maybe the way I lead is a bit like that. I know the kind of area I need to head towards, but never really map out the way. I almost head there by trial and error without all the details worked out.  Most times I succeed, sometimes I fail big-time.

Broadly knowing where I am going, but not really nailing down the best route.

Hmm

I'm not sure this is a great leadership trait.

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.

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.