From Garbage to Grain – Fellows Bulk Logistics

[kscarbel2]

Power Torque Magazine  /  February 2017

From Garbage to Grain – Dave Whyte profiles Fellows Bulk Logistics

With the recent harvest being one of the best in a long time, those involved in the transport and storage of the bumper crop are hard at work looking after the product our farmers have worked so hard to provide.

While most of us take for granted the ability to just go down the shops and grab a loaf of bread or a slab of our favourite beer, many people have spent a great deal of time ensuring the base ingredients would be both available and of suitable quality to maintain supply of these vital products (Yes, beer is vital!). While the harvest is a very busy time for grain handlers, with a need to harvest and store the grain before it spoils, I was fortunate enough to catch up with Paul Fellows of Fellows Bulk Logistics from Deniliquin to learn a little more about the business of moving and storing grain.

Fellows Bulk Logistics grew from Paul’s love of trucks, and growing up around the industry.

“I’ve always loved trucks”, Paul said. It may sound strange, but Paul’s Dad was a highway policeman who drove trucks on the weekends, eventually leaving the police force to drive Greyhound Buses.

“Mum and Dad said I couldn’t be a truck driver, because it wasn’t a good occupation. So, I went to ag-college and graduated from Dookie in 1981. By then, my dad had a couple of garbage trucks, so I came home and started driving them, doing the garbage,” Paul said.

“We built that up to about 30 trucks and sold it to Cleanaway, then I went farming for about ten years”. After struggling to make money from the farm, Paul turned back to trucks. “I got a contract carting out to a piggery, about a hundred Ks off the main road,” he said.

Using a custom-built trailer, Paul was able to do a job that no-one else could, delivering rice hulls into the pig sheds. This contract also included the removal of the waste and manure, which Paul sold on to garden supplies companies.

“That’s what got me started. We were running a double shift, six days a week,” he said.

Paul saw another opportunity in carting local red gum wood chips to landscaping suppliers in Melbourne, and when Landmark set up their fertiliser business in Deniliquin, Paul also picked up their work.

“So all of a sudden, I was in tippers,” Paul said.

The drought led to a lack of rice hulls needing to be moved, and a quiet year for Fellows. “A bloke rang me and asked if I wanted to subcontract, carting sugar cane bagasse out of Ayr. So, I went up there for three months, took a driver up, and we worked flat out for three months”.

That three months of work led to Paul getting the prime contract to cart the bagasse a few years later. “I had to go and tender against everyone else, but we’d been doing it for a long time, and we do a good job,” Paul said. “We weren’t the cheapest, but we got it”.

Bagasse is the fibrous pulp left over after the liquid is removed from the sugar cane. While it was once considered a waste product, it is now used in generating power for the sugar refinery all year round, and for half of Mackay from January to April. This provides a reliable power source along with environmental benefits and virtually no waste from the refining process.

“We’ll cart 130,000 tonnes of that in (to storage) this year, and 130,000 tonnes out,” Paul said proudly.

The addition of a grain storage facility in Blighty to the business portfolio not only added to the services on offer, but also provided some extra stability for the tippers in the fleet, with year-round freight to be moved down south.

“That sort of underpins a bit of the work,” Paul said. “I have a lot of work coming north, but not so much going south”. That site now handles 5000 tonnes of grain, with a second site in Hay having the capacity for a further 10,000 tonnes. Given the bumper harvest, both of these sites are full this year, with a third site – also in Hay – being leased to handle the demand.

“We’ll probably do 20,000 tonnes this year,” Paul said.

The Fellows fleet is made up mainly of Kenworth trucks, which are bought through Darren Nichols at Twin City Truck Centre in Wodonga.

“I use all SARs for the contract work in Queensland, and 909s for the tipper work. Two years ago, I thought I want to be more subjective in what we’re doing, so I bought a Volvo and a Western Star,” Paul said. “I also bought an SAR with the MX engine, and I’ve compared the two (the Volvo and the SAR). They’re nearly identical on fuel, maintenance was identical, but there was about $30k difference in the purchase price. But, at the other end (resale), I don’t know what’s going to happen with the Volvo”.

“We use Matilda Walking Floors, and Lusty and Pumpa trailers out of Swan Hill for the tippers. I’ve had Lusty EMS trailers out of Brisbane, and I’ve never touched them. They’ve been six or seven years old, and we’ve never put a weld on them,” Paul added.

The latest equipment purchase is a set of Graham Lusty tippers, which will offer the flexibility to operate as an A-double (double road train) within Victoria at weights up to 68.5-tonne GCM.

“We’ll tackle that in the New Year,” Paul said. Trailers are also replaced after five or six years, with regular buyers keen to snap up Fellows’ secondhand equipment.

As far as servicing goes, the Queensland-based trucks are serviced by a company-employed mechanic, while the Deniliquin-based trucks are serviced by a local mechanic, in Fellows’ depot.

“Our trucks only do about 15,000 km a month, so we’re only servicing them every couple of months,” Paul said.

Paul updates his trucks every five years, and he says, “Because they’re under five years old, we have no issues with gearboxes, diffs, universals or any of that sort of stuff”.

Paul is a strong believer in running clean skin tyres all round, including some Chinese brands on the trailers.

“We run a lot of Chinese tyres in Mackay, because it’s all short hauland we’ll scrub a tyre before we really wear it out,” Paul said. “They’ve been running Chinese tyres up there for a few years now, with a lot of success. There’s good and bad in them as well, but the Triangles have been good tyres”.

Another big aspect of the Fellows operation is its involvement in the TruckSafe programme. Paul is passionate about the benefits of the programme, not only for his employee’s safety, but also in obtaining work.

“Policy and procedure is the biggest thing in your business,” Paul said. “It’s two things – you’re protecting your staff, and you’re protecting yourself. If I can do everything I possibly can to protect my drivers…”.

This commitment to safety has been rewarded, with Fellows Bulk Logistics winning the John Kelly Memorial Award for Transport Safety in 2016. “I care about my guys, they’re all good fellas. A lot of them have been with me a long time. Some of them are coming up for their long service, which is pretty much unheard of in road transport.

“I give them really good equipment and pay them by the hour. They get paid when they’re washing their truck, checking the oil, when they’re waiting to load, etc.,” he said. “They’re always home Friday night, and they don’t often go away on Sundays. I need my weekends off, and I’m no different to my staff”.

A willingness to take on the jobs no-one else would do, along with a commendable attitude towards staff and equipment, has seen Fellows Bulk Logistics grow from a one-man operation to a fleet of twelve trucks, with operations in Queensland and southern New South Wales.

It’s interesting to see how a small business can take on some of the big business ideals, such as involvement in TruckSafe and regular equipment updates, and make them work to their benefit.

While Fellows Bulk Logistics may be a fairly small player in the big scheme of things, it is a good example of how smaller operators can control quality in all aspects of their business, including equipment, employees and service. In the long term, this is what guarantees the efficient and reliable supply of life’s essentials. So next time you’re lucky enough to kick back with a sausage in bread and a beer (as we quite often do at this time of year), spare a thought for those Fellows that make it possible.

.