Q&A: Brian Kruger – MD, Toll Group

trucksales.com.au talks about safety, investment and meeting the growing freight task with Toll Group Managing Director, Brian Kruger

trucksales.com.au recently caught up with Toll Group Managing Director Brian Kruger at the multi-national's Annual General Meeting, which was held at the Melbourne Convention Centre on Thursday, October 23. With heavy vehicle safety, infrastructure and the projected growth of Australia's road freight industry very much in the spotlight, here's what the Toll chief – who oversees around 40,000 employees across 1200 sites in 50 countries – had to say…

trucksales.com.au: Heavy vehicle safety and maintenance are hot topics in the mainstream press at present. In maintaining its truck fleet, has Toll altered its approach to these issues in any way since the much-publicised Cootes tanker tragedy of October last year?

Brian Kruger: I wouldn't say we've altered our approach but we've certainly revisited all of our procedures and ensured that we're adhering to those procedures. I think any time you have incidents like that it shines a spotlight on maintenance-type issues generally.

We've done a number of internal reviews; we always find things to improve when we do those reviews and we're working on making those improvements now, but the other thing that we'll be looking to do reasonably soon is to get an independent assessment both of our procedures and of our adherence to those procedures. It's really just to give us all comfort that we're doing all the things we should be doing from a maintenance perspective.

The data and all the information suggest that we are doing a very good job. We work with the regulators and show them what we do and how we do it, and we're more than happy for them to check that out and give us any ideas for improvement.

I don't think the focus on maintenance practices should, however, take away from focuses on the other key drivers of road-related incidents around fatigue and speed. From Toll's experience we probably have more on-road incidents – whether it's us or our contractors – where there would be some concern from a speed or a fatigue point of view than we do from maintenance.

It doesn’t mean we shouldn't be good at all three – in fact you need to be great at all three. But we can't as an industry and as a company lose sight of continuing to work on fatigue-related and speed-related issues.

TS: Toll has been very proactive in the use of forward- and driver-facing cameras in its trucks. Have the cameras had much impact on accident rates and how do drivers now feel about the use of this technology?

BK: It has absolutely had an impact on incident rates with our vehicles. We're rolling it out progressively across different parts of the business, so it's in place in particular with our long-distance line-haul vehicles that are operating in Queensland and Western Australia – both the outward-facing and inward-facing cameras.

We use it as a training tool and I think that's the message that needs to get through to people who are using this sort of technology – you don't use it as a stick. I think that was the fear for a number of drivers when we introduced this technology – we could see what was causing incidents and what they [the driver] might have been doing at the time of the incident. They were concerned that we were going to use it as a stick.

We've been using the technology now across the company, certainly for the inward-facing cameras, for well over 12 months, and the drivers are now comfortable that we're using it as a training tool. I think the fact that they understand that that's the way we're going to use it means it's now generally got support around our company.

Recently we still had some challenges getting it into our vehicles here in Victoria – there was quite a lot of opposition – but fortunately we got a good decision out of the Fair Work Commission that has allowed us to introduce the cameras into Victoria as well.

We've had the discussion internally and with people who are reviewing the incidents; you have to use it as a tool to support training, to support driver behaviour improvement, that sort of thing, and we've done that and won the confidence of our people.

I frankly have not had one call from either the union or from a driver expressing a concern about how we're using that technology and I'm sure if there was an issue out there I would have heard about it. I understand why they [the drivers] get nervous but it's up to us to prove to them that we'll use it the right way.

TS: Road freight is expected to increase markedly in this country in coming decades. What do you see as the greatest challenges facing the road freight industry in meeting that growing demand, and what is Toll doing to address those challenges?

BK: Some of the things we can do, and some of the things we need our governments to do. I think the biggest challenge in terms of meeting that increasing freight requirement is infrastructure. Whether that's road, rail, or ports, we need investment in infrastructure in this country to support the growing freight task we're faced with.

I think governments are heading in the right direction. Infrastructure investment is certainly getting a lot of debate and discussion at the moment but that's because people want to make decisions and make investments, which I think is a positive thing.

So the infrastructure piece is part of it, but the other thing we need to do as a company is ensure – in areas like our express parcel business where we do expect volumes to grow significantly – that we're invested in our depot network, in our sortation capability, in our materials handling capability, ahead of when the demand is needed.

Those sorts of investments we are making in Sydney and Melbourne now with our sortation equipment. They're two or three years in the making so we need to invest ahead of those, but the facilities will be there for the next 20 years. We need to position our own assets for growth, but really it will need some support from the government in terms of infrastructure across a range of modes.

TS: Going forward, what measures would you like to see initiated or streamlined by the NTC and NHVR to aid the growth of Australia's road freight industry?

BK: Clearly there's a lot of work being done around road charging mechanisms and if a road charging mechanism comes in, telematics will support how that actually plays out. I'm not personally opposed to charging road users but the money then needs to go back into the roads. If they're raising money from people who are using the roads, let's ensure it's being invested in the roads to make sure we've got the right road infrastructure.

TS: But do you think the establishment of the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) is a step in the right direction?

BK: I absolutely do. It is very challenging operating a transport company across different states in Australia where there is a variety of legislation across a whole range of areas. There are actually different fatigue-related legislations across different states – it's challenging to deal with.

I'm very supportive of the NHVR. They had a bit of a rocky start but things have improved, and having those critical national bodies [the NHVR and the NTC] and removing red tape, removing complexity, will assist growth. They won't get there on their own but they're obviously heading in the right direction.

Andrew Ethell (Toll's Group Director, Corporate Affairs): The NHVR now has the Heavy Vehicle National Law so there is a lot more consistency in the regulation, which is a really good thing. What we are yet to see is the NHVR drive cultural consistency within the organisation as well. It's one thing to say you've got the same law, but how are you applying it? I think that's the bit that's going to be really important for us moving forward and I think the national regulator has to take that challenge up and really run hard with it.

With regard to organisations like the National Transport Commission, I would encourage them to be courageous about some of the things they look at. For example, let's have a really hard look at whether operator licencing would be a good thing for the industry.

BK: One of the examples with the different approach from different regulators in different states at the moment is that we do tend to see different approaches to how different regulators assess vehicles across different states.

Now, I think part of that is probably driven by the different cultures within the different regulatory bodies and part of it is probably driven by the individuals who are doing the assessment, but work on making sure that we can be clear on what issues with vehicles will be considered minor, what issues will be considered major, and how they'll be dealt with, will help. That's the sort of issue that we as an industry struggle with at the moment.

Q&amp;A: Brian Kruger – MD, Toll Group

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Q&A: Brian Kruger – MD, Toll Group