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NZ Trucking : September 2016
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www.goclear.co.nz www.goclear.co.nz Now you can pay for fuel from your cab Late for a job? Accountant nagging you about lost fuel receipts? With the new BPMe app downloaded for free onto your smartphone, you can pay for your fuel without leaving the cab, saving precious time. BPMe also keeps track of fuel receipts (happy accountant), remembers coffee purchases (it’ll tell you when your free one is due), and it can even find the nearest BP station for you. BPMe, download the app today. Available for selected BP Fuelcards Terms and conditions apply. See www.bp.co.nz/bpme for details. Only at participating sites BP0938 BPMe Mag Ad_NZT_FP_1108.indd 1 20/07/16 4:00 pm EDITORIAL Having Thor’s hammer and choosing to hit your thumb T here are few industries that are truly omnipotent. Industries that are essentially a fulcrum in the economy, forming a point through which everyone else’s energy and activity must pass in order for them to continue. If, for example, the health and fitness industry decided to try and change their situation, viability, and appeal, it wouldn’t be an easy task. Any adjustment on price or conditions would simply result in us all buying a bike or deciding to walk up a hill instead – we still get healthier and they lose customers. Ironically the road transport industry is one of the most well defined economic fulcrums. We stop – everyone stops. Like electricity and fuel, every single commercial and residential address in New Zealand has a reliance on our services at a level that determines their ability to exist or not. That ’s a position of great power for an industry to be in. So why is it that our industry behaves the way it does and is currently confronted with the issues it has, particularly in regard to the labour market? How is it that we, who possess the economic equivalent of Thor’s hammer, choose to belt themselves on the thumb with it, as we have done time and time again? The problem is one of perceived value. As an industry, the value we place on ourselves has always been a point of exploitation for bolstering the margins of those we serve, both inside the cab and in the management office. Regardless of the actual sway we hold and the reality of the skillset required at the wheel, the value proposition is still undermined by ease of entry. A transport services licence, a small amount of borrowed cash for a good truck, a driver’s licence, an Excel spreadsheet, and you’re away. Likewise a driver’s licence will get you started at some level as a driver, hence the low value proposition it projects, both within the industry and and in the eyes of the public. If you don’t believe me, start an oil exploration or electricity generation company. When it comes to fulcrum industries, we stand alone in the ease of entry stakes. Because of this lack of perceived value the absence of bums in drivers’ seats will show no signs of abating, especially while conditions and remuneration remain so out of kilter with the level of responsibility. It baffles me that at a time when we are attempting to increase the awareness of truck driving to prospective and future labour markets, we continue to publicly undermine the value proposition by extolling the virtues of a faster easier path to gaining a full licence. Surely one opposes the other. The industry supposedly has strong representation in the bodies determining what occupations are deemed a trade qualification, and how pathways are unified and benchmarked nationally in order to value a skillset in this way. Surely, that ’s a far better long-term value proposition that should be lobbied far more vigorously throughout the industry and public arena alike. Dave McCoid adapted masthead.indd 1 8/ 02/2012 11:02:4 7 a .m . 6 New Zealand Trucking September 2016
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