Success: Pair aim to save cash by the truckload

Andrew Bishop (left) and Walter Ormsby believe they can help transport companies cut costs, and deliver bargains for people with goods to move. Photo / Christine Cornege

Not too many car drivers are particularly keen on sharing the roads with thundering great trucks. So an initiative that helps cut truck traffic - while also reducing freight charges - is a guaranteed winner with most motorists.

Will truckies also see it that way? That's the question that will determine the success of a year-old web venture, Findatruckload, which is intended to link people who have goods to move with transport companies which have an empty truck.

The service, dreamed up by former Mainfreight employees Walter Ormsby and Andrew Bishop, is pitched at the transport industry as a way of saving some of the millions spent driving empty trucks back to their depots. So much the better if it does other motorists a favour at the same time.

According to Ormsby, empty running, as it's known in the business, was costing Mainfreight $3 million a year on one run alone - between New Plymouth, where he was manager for four years, and Whangarei.

He reckons Mainfreight's empty-running losses nationally would be about $5 million and, with 1500 trucking firms throughout New Zealand, the total cost to the country would be many times that figure.

"The idea sprang from that - there seemed a gap in the market, and utilising the internet was the obvious way to fill it," says Ormsby, Findatruckload's operations manager.

His first thought was to develop Findatruckload, which he describes as fulfilling a brokering role, for Mainfreight. But when he and Bishop, a Mainfreight sales rep, put their heads together, they figured they would have more success if it was available to any firm to use.

"The whole aim of the game is to make the industry more efficient, so it has to have benefits for everyone involved," says Hamilton-based Bishop.

So far, the benefits for the pair are modest. The service is set up so they make 6 per cent commission on carrying arrangements made through the site.

It's the kind of matchmaking service the internet might have been invented for. The site has two tabs where those looking for a truck or a load can see what's available, and two others where details of available trucks or loads can be posted.

The party that listed either the goods to be moved or an available truck pays the commission.

Ormsby says similar sites in the United States and Britain were the inspiration for the findatruck.co.nz design, the work of New Plymouth website developer efinity.

The beauty of a web business, Bishop says, is that overheads are low. After spending about $100,000 to get Findatruckload off the ground, it is now paying a small return, with the potential for revenue and profit to grow "exponentially".

The key is to get truckies, in particular, using it. The site has about 500 registered users from more than 200 trucking firms, according to Ormsby. "About half of them are using the site on a daily basis."

Various ideas are being pursued to get more using it. Findatruckload belongs to both the National Road Carriers and New Zealand Road Transport associations, the bodies that represent the industry at an operational level.

Findatruckload's mission is to get truckies seeing the operational gains they could be making by using its independent service. But for a competitive industry, that could take a change of thinking, says Bishop, who is in charge of chasing new business.

While on the one hand the service can match retail customers - the person with half a dozen pallets to shift from A to B - with a carrier with available capacity, he sees greater potential in the way it allows carriers with more freight than capacity to subcontract to another firm with an empty truck on the same run.

"That's where we really want to push it in the future," Bishop says. "Getting the transport companies working together. When you take the industry as a whole, there are a lot of efficiencies to be gained from sharing line haul."

But that does not mean neglecting retail customers. Tie-ups are being explored with businesses such as livestock traders and car-rental firms so they could use the site to broker carrying arrangements at cheaper rates, on the basis that the carrier would otherwise be running an empty truck.

"If you're returning from Auckland to Hamilton, why run back empty?" asks Ormsby. "If it's costing you $100 in fuel, why not say to a customer that you'll take their freight for $100, or $150, instead of the $400 [you] might usually charge?"

The opportunity is also there to work with auction sites such as Trade Me.

"Initially we wanted to keep it simple - business to business rather than retail. But we're giving the site a bit of a revamp so that, say, someone who's bought 10 pallets of bricks on Trade Me and wants to move them from A to B, and is asking who to use, can come to us," says Ormsby.

If the service catches on, not only will transport companies cut their costs and people with goods to shift be able to get heavily discounted rates, but there should also be environmental gains.

ON THE ROAD

Ministry of Transport figures show that road transport:

* Handles about 70 per cent of all domestic freight.
* Accounted for 18 million tonne-kilometres of freight last year - up 25 per cent since 2000.
* Employs about 34,600 people, about half of all people working in the transport industry.