Innovation in practice

Being open to innovation helped the Glen Cameron Group build a unique business ecosystem that has been able to facilitate growth since 1975. To maintain that competitive advantage, the family business has now invested in Vawdrey’s latest buckle-less curtain system.

As one of Australia’s leading logistics companies, Melbourne’s Glen Cameron Group has created a truly national footprint including key retail and manufacturing businesses, metropolitan and interstate. To consistently meet the demands of blue chip clients in these sectors, the family business has forged a strong partnership with local trailer building expert Vawdrey – a relationship that has stood for 30 years and counting.

“At Cameron, we are all committed to grow and nurture the business Glen Cameron has built up, so there is no standing still in regard to fleet management. Vawdrey is one key manufacturer who has proven time and again that it can provide a high quality trailer without much lead time, which is why we have always stuck with the brand,” says Bruce Forsyth, Cameron’s General Manager.

“We pride ourselves in providing a responsive and reliable transport service, so if a client has an urgent job – even it’s a large one – we need to make sure we have the vehicle numbers to back up that demand. There’s nothing worse than locking in a date of service and not having the wheels to start on time.”

Next to innovation, growth’ is one key value driving the Glen Cameron Group. So when the company won a contract to haul ‘Masters Home Improvement’ products in the first half of 2012, the Cameron management immediately began tailoring a fleet to suit the home improvement chain. By October 2012, it placed an order for nine custom-built Vawdrey curtain-siders, and as of March 2013, all nine have entered into service.

“Masters is Woolworths’ home improvement and hardware store, so as you can imagine with their growing store network, there are increasing volumes daily being shipped from their warehouse in Hoppers Crossing,” Bruce says.

Each new ‘Titeliner’ can carry up to 24-pallets, which are secured by load restraint curtains all displaying the Masters logo along the side. Each curtain is equipped with Vawdrey’s much talked-about, automatic opening system – virtually waiving the need to handle traditional buckles. According to Bruce, the automatic buckle-less curtain buy cheap diflucan technology is what really drew the Cameron management to decide on Vawdrey again.

“There is never an issue with the build quality of the trailer itself, as Vawdrey consistently excel in this department. But the real feature that we like on these new trailers is the buckle-less option,” he says. “The system allows the operator to open and close the curtain without having to open and close each individual buckle, radically accelerating the loading and unloading procedure. On top of that, it decreases injury risks because our drivers don’t have to handle gates or buckles manually anymore, which is a major improvement from an OH&S perspective.”

“As a business, we are observing the changing legislation in regard to heavy vehicle transport size very closely and always move with those changes to maximise our productivity. That’s where Vawdrey can really help national fleets like us because they are always innovative and improving their portfolio to suit those legal requirements,” Bruce says.

“However, the winning factor still is the buckleless load restraint curtain system, because it can increase both productivity and operator safety at once, all while preserving the integrity of the our clients’ product. What more could you want?”

As one of Australia’s leading transport providers operating since 1975, the Glen Cameron Group has grown to become a multimillion-dollar logistics operation managing 100,000m² of warehouse space and a national fleet of more than 750 vehicles, servicing all the major cities including Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Sydney, Brisbane and Darwin, and regional areas in those states, including Tasmania.

Over the past decades, Glen Cameron divided the business into five major divisions; local trucking, couriers, warehousing, third party logistics and interstate transport. The development of independent business units has given the Glen Cameron Group the opportunity to be a “one-stop-shop” offering integrated logistics solutions across Australia. What hasn’t changed, though, is the close relationship between Cameron and Vawdrey.

Bruce: “Our linehaul business is mostly based on B-doubles, and our metropolitan business is typically single trailer-based. We use a combination of flat deck curtain-siders, mezzanine curtain-siders, three-zone freezer chiller trailers, refrigerated trailers, and even some flat top trailers. Vawdrey has built large percentage of those and that’s a testament to the strong relationship that Glen built with them back we started the business.”