“Innovating for Tomorrow” is far from just a token tagline that looks good on the side of the South East Queensland Hauliers (SEQH) fleet of 90 Volvos and Macks.
Innovation and collaboration, underpinned by prudent risk management practices, have been driving forces behind the sustained success and impressive growth of SEQH since Brett Plummer bought the business in 1997.
The son of a transport operator, who pivoted to a career in investment banking before returning to his first love, Plummer has taken an operation that was primarily a tipping fleet with some containers and flipped it on its head.
“Having established that we wanted to be a major port operator, the way forward from there was pretty simple – get land, get in Hemmant and get big,” Plummer said on the first episode of the company’s new podcast series, Rolling Forward with SEQH.
Along the way, SEQH has built its reputation on finding smarter, more cost-effective ways to move freight to and from the Port of Brisbane.
One of Plummer’s most notable early achievements was the launch of the game-changing A-double from the Port of Brisbane in 2010 to coincide with the company’s expansion to Toowoomba.
In 2017, SEQH also deployed the first single-axle A-double for dedicated assets on de-hiring import containers and also to pick up the empty exports.
The following year SEQH hit the trailer trifecta by unveiling a tri-axle dolly A-double to maximise the payload for its newly launched log-packing operation.
“Logs are a low-margin commodity and very price driven and the customers want to maximise their weight,” explained SEQH’s Deputy Managing Director Nathan Craner, podcast co-host and Plummer’s right-hand man for the last decade.
“So, they want to get that as close to 32.5-tonne gross in a container. You’re looking at almost 28-tonne net of cargo and the standard A-double doesn’t permit that.
“Again, that was strategically done to support our customers and our business to keep freight pricing down.”
Beyond trailer design, SEQH has also pioneered innovative approaches to customer service.
Craner shared an example of how SEQH helped a recycling plant customer by implementing a hybrid model for cargo packing.
“They had a product that gets baled up and shoots out, but it can’t get wet, and what they were doing was packing outside; they had no enclosed area to actually pack the cargo.
“And how they were doing it was trailer-live loading. So, if it’s raining, they essentially had to stop packing. So, we said, let’s do a hybrid model, where we put some containers on the ground with side-loader, and we also do your trailer model as well.
“It just means that you’re divorcing the trucking labour from your warehousing labour, and it always means you’ve always got a box in the ground so as soon as that bale comes off the off the line, you can pack it.
“That’s helped them increase their numbers – in the next few months they’re scaling up to do 80 a week rather than 35.”
Other innovation and collaboration with customers include putting container handlers on their facilities.
“Where previously they were using side-loaders, we’ve either put an actual container handler or heavy forklift on site. Again, it’s to try and divorce the labor so we can arrive with our trucks, and either our drivers, or the site operators, can actually lift the boxes off and store them.
“When it comes time to packing, they can then pack them at their leisure, and they get loaded as full boxes. It’s all separated.
“We have one customer that has a truck of ours on their site. They use this as a yard truck. They’ve got a trailer on site. They’ve got two container handlers on site, and they’ve got our weigh cell on site.
“It just means that once they finish packing the container, they can then put it on the weigh cell to get their VGM (verified gross mass), and then it goes in the full stack, and then our trucks come in. That’s a fully integrated model that we’ve got going on there.”
Perhaps the most exciting development more recently, however, is the company’s move toward electric vehicles, as first revealed in the June 6 issue of Big Rigs.
Late last month, SEQH took delivery of two Volvo Electrics, an FM and an FH, with plans to have the latter in the world’s first road train configuration for a truck that was purpose-built by an original equipment manufacturer.
Within a couple of days of the official launch on May 27, SEQH had put the FH to work carting empties as an A-double and Craner hopes it will quickly move to 45-metre triple duties soon after the on-road assessment with the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator’s Chief Engineer Les Bruzsa scheduled for June 16.
Already the FM has been reassigned to carting full containers of chicken feed for the Ingham’s in an A-double configuration, loading anywhere between 8-12 containers each afternoon.
Even in the early days, Craner can see the payoffs with the high-productivity, zero emission vehicles, from the reduced fatigue demands the trucks have on their drivers, to the early interest from clients with similar sustainability ideals.
“We’re also using clean energy back at our depot to charge those vehicles. We’ve got a massive 100kW solar system on our roof.”
Meanwhile, while the charging routines are tweaked and payloads maximised, SEQH keeps expanding its footprint across its major containing hubbing operation in Hemmant, which also offers a suite of warehousing solutions, Toowoomba and a soon-to-launch Port of Brisbane site.
“Essentially we’re a full-service wharf logistics provider and that home base is in Hemmant, but we’re bursting at the seams,” Craner said.
“We’ve got 90,000 square metres [at Hemmant] and we need more. That’s why we signed a lease with the Port of Brisbane and that’s going to give us 57,000 square metres.
“The purpose then is to move 70 per cent of our transport hubbing yard down to the port and we’re also going to build a warehouse and a wash bay there as well.”
Craner said the space freed up at Hemmant would then be taken up by more warehousing to support that growing market.
The Toowoomba hubbing operation dates back to 2011, soon after the launch of the A-double in 2010.
“It was literally so we can just store containers in Toowoomba. We’d run empties from Brisbane to Toowoomba with our A-doubles. We then have a fleet of trucks in Toowoomba and run road trains from that base to our customers – then we do the same thing in return.
“It’s a way we can help a wide spectrum of customers and do so fast.”
At its peak, the Toowoomba operation has moved up 100 containers a day between Toowoomba and the Port of Brisbane.
Over the years, SEQH has progressively purchased, one, two and then three blocks for a total of 180,000 square metres in Toowoomba.
Of that, 40,000 square metres is now developed, but Craner said there are plans to grow further in the Darling Downs capital.
Earlier this year, SEQH finished building a small warehouse on site, and just two weeks before this interview, received its licence to pack cotton.
“That’s to support a market in which product can go from the farm to the gin, then from the gin to our warehouse. We can then offer that packing solution, and then truck that cotton down to Brisbane,” Craner said.
“What we’re trying to do in Toowoomba now is mirror a lot of things we’ve done in Hemmant by being a full-service provider. We’re planning to build more warehouses to help with more port logistics on that western corridor.”