Close to 150 transport business owners, managers, administrators, and specialist consultants attended the inaugural Freight2020 Australia and New Zealand user group conference in March 2017. The enthusiastic response from participants confirmed the arrival of Freight2020 VISION as a major annual transport industry technology event.

Richers Transport, headquartered in Maryborough, Queensland, sent a team of four delegates including Matthew Richers [above] to the inaugural Freight2020 VISION conference in Melbourne

“This has been a great day,” said Sydney-based Allan Thornley, managing director of Shaw’s Darwin Transport, during the lunch break at Freight2020 VISION. Shaw’s are the market-leading freight carriers operating in and out of Darwin and were long-term users of a competitive transport management system until switching to Freight2020. “It’s enlightened us to some of the greater aspects of the [Freight2020] system and taught us a few things we didn’t know.”

Matthew Richers of Richers Transport, Maryborough-headquartered eastern seaboard carriers with more than 200 employees, said, “There are four of us from the company here today and I guess the most exciting thing for us is reconfirming Freight2020 as the right fit for our business. We use Freight2020 in its entire capacity throughout our operations, repairs and maintenance workshop, accounts… It’s been good for myself and the rest of our team to look at Freight2020 Mobility, which we’re implementing in the coming months, as well as the business analytics [Freight2020 BI360 real-time business analytics dashboard], which will be really great for our financial team and director.”

Peter Evenden, managing director of Prospect Refrigerated Transport, the Sydney-based company which carries temperature-sensitive freight for some of Australia’s iconic grocery brands said, “I’m down here in Melbourne having a great time and learning lots.”

Another Sydney-based delegate was Emerson Pierce from John L Pierce Transport (“JLP”), the bulk tanker specialists with 150 trucks and more than 330 employees. “It’s been a very interesting day, learned a lot,” said Emerson. “We’ve taken away a fair bit, so really happy to be here.”

“This is a very exciting time for us”

Siobhan Clifford was one of the delegates representing Mount Noorat Freighters at Freight2020 VISION 2017

Siobhan Clifford, one of a team representing the Victorian-based bulk haulage specialists Mount Noorat Freighters at VISION said, “We’ve had a great day today at the first Freight2020 conference. We’re looking forward to using Freight2020 Mobility in the near future.”

With Freight2020 now one of the fastest-growing Progress OpenEdge-based ERP solutions in the APJ (Australia, Pacific, Japan) region, many delegates attending VISION on behalf of their respective companies were relatively new to the system. Mark Battersby of PK Logistics said, “We are just about to go live with Freight2020 so this is a very exciting time for us. It gives us lots of new opportunities to explore with compliance and safety, possibly mobility, and also our warehouse and transport is going to be integrated, which is very important for us.”

More than 130 transport and logistics companies based in Australia and New Zealand are now using Freight2020 to drive their businesses more efficiently and competitively, a good number of these being represented by delegates making the journey to attend Freight2020 VISION 2017.

Peter Evenden, Emerson Pierce, Allan Thornley, Matthew Richers, Siobhan Clifford, and Mark Battersby were interviewed at Freight2020 VISION for the 2-minute “Freight2020 VISION 2017 Delegate Reviews” video which is now available for viewing on YouTube.

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A standard feature of Freight2020 since the official announcement of its release in December 2013, Item-Level Tracking is being used successfully by a growing number of transport businesses with diverse operational requirements.

Rob Mullins, managing director of CMS Transport Systems, explained how customer needs were met by the development of Item-Level Tracking.

Item-Level Tracking functionality explained

“While some companies and their customers need only to track whole consignments, this consignment-based approach does not provide sufficient detail or control in every freight situation. For example, what happens when a load is picked up as one consignment but then split into separate pallets, cartons, or individual items for delivery to customers in different locations, or consolidation into warehouse inventory? Developing the seamless management of these complexities within Freight2020 was a fine achievement for the CMS technical team, and a real breakthrough for many organisations using Freight2020 right around Australia,” Rob said.

Sample of Freight2020 custom-branded Item-Level Tracking barcode label

Custom-branded barcode labels printed in batches or on-demand

Freight2020 Item-Level Tracking can begin with the printing of a custom-branded barcode label to be applied to each trackable item or trackable unit of freight within each consignment. From this point, a separate record is created in the Freight2020 system for each barcoded item. Each of these barcoded items will remain electronically trackable even when no longer physically associated with the rest of its original consignment.

Online track-and-trace of individual pallets, cartons, or items within consignments

Scanning devices are used to track the movement of the barcoded items or freight units in transit, through to receipted customer delivery with sign-on-glass via the Freight2020 mobile app or an integrated ruggedised mobile device, or delivery into the warehouse or cold storage where scanning will add the item, carton of items, or pallet-load of items to the customer’s 3PL storage inventory.

At every scanned waypoint or event in the journey, the Freight2020 system is automatically updated so that freight customers can monitor the progress of their consignments, and individually-barcoded items within consignments, in real-time via the Freight2020 Online Customer Portal.

For completely hands-free customer service updates, Freight2020 has a system-wide Auto-Email Notifications feature which authorised users can set to automatically notify freight customers via email whenever there is a significant freight-tracking event, from initial pick-up and transit through legs of the journey to the automatic sending of final proof-of-delivery to the customer, or receipt into storage. When the all-important invoice goes out to the customer, all of the charges pertaining to freight movements and changes to stored inventory are pre-validated.

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An iconic presence on highways throughout remote regions of Australia, a heavy vehicle displaying the striking red-and-white livery of K&S Freighters

Profit from K&S operations in New Zealand rose exponentially from $277,000 to $1.48 million with further growth predicted – an encouraging indicator for any Australian transport company looking to expand their own interests and operations outside of Australia.

The main contributor to K&S’ profit growth in dollar terms remained their Australian-based operations, delivering $10.4 million net profit, up from $8 million, notwithstanding that K&S faced the same set of challenges as any company with exposure to slowed manufacturing and mining-related demand.

K&S was originally established in 1945 to support Mt Gambier and Victoria-based businesses, expanding their road freight transport operations into national rail-freight forwarding in 1976. In 1991 K&S became the first B-double combination operator in Victoria.

K&S became a public company in 1998 – growing reach, capacity, and diversity through acquisitions starting with Brisbane-based FH Transport in 2000, adding Stepnell Transport in 2001. K&S’ presence in New Zealand commenced in 2002 with the acquisition of Cochrane’s Transport, followed by McCarthy’s Transport (log haulage) and North Eastern Transport (primary produce haulage).

Acquisitions continued in Australia with the addition of DTM (Melbourne) then Brooke’s Transport (Bunbury) in 2008, and in 2010 came Pacific Transport, and Perth-based Regal Transport Group. K&S acquired Collare Transport in 2012, then in 2014 the very significant acquisition of Scott Corporation was completed via an off-market takeover bid. Scott Corporation comprises four high-profile operating divisions: Bulktrans, Chemtrans, Energytrans, and Hyde Park Tanks. K&S completed the acquisition of the FMCG freight-forwarding specialists Northern Territory Freight Services (NTFS) in March 2015.

K&S Freighters

Increases in revenue not always increasing net profits in transport industry

“Increasing the financial turnover of a transport business by expanding the fleet and diversifying services doesn’t necessarily translate into increased profit – not even when economic conditions are most conducive to growth,” said Grant Walmsley, general manager of CMS Transport Systems.

“Inefficient administrative systems, compliance and maintenance oversights, and shortcomings in customer service can undermine the profitability of any transport business,” Grant said.

Optimisation of business systems and processes

K&S reportedly attributed this latest chapter in the company’s success story in part to “new IT solutions to support customer service and operational efficiency and cost reduction initiatives”. CMS added that these new solutions included the progressive implementation of Freight2020 transport software modules for Operations Management and Warehouse Management.

“K&S was using a well-known competitive transport management software solution before making the switch to Freight2020. Following a very extensive period of in-house testing and evaluation by K&S, Freight2020 was determined to be the best fit for the group’s needs going forward,” said Grant.

Chemtrans, well-known specialists in bulk liquid transportation including dangerous and explosive goods, is one of four businesses within Scott Corporation, acquired by K&S in 2014

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