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3,554 Miles with Furniture

Australian Removers with 130 Vehicles Operate from Four Depots : 2.7m. Miles a Year Covered on Removals : Difficult Conditions in Town and Country AREGULAR 3,554-mile furniture-removal service, which includes 1,400 miles of barren desert, is not the sort of work that most operators in Great Britain would be prepared to tackle. Such a service is, however, now running between Adelaide, in South Australia, and Perth, Western Australia.

The groundwork for such a big project was undertaken five years ago by the Sydney removals concern of Grace Bros. Pty., Ltd., who thus pioneered a new link between the populous eastern side of the Australian continent and the isolated western side.

Pioneering such routes as the Adelaide-Perth run is relatively a side-line so far as the normal commitments of Grace Bros. are concerned. Their ramifications are numerous and the organization is split into groups. The transport group is managed by Mr. R. A. Reedman, A.W.R.I., Assoc.Inst.T., A.F.A.1.M., and he was able to give me a clear insight into the working of his fleet of 130 vehicles, of which all but 10 are British.

Mr. Reedman is well acquainted with British furniture-removal practice, having served in that industry in Britain for many years. He was, therefore, able to take a working knowledge of the industry out to Australia and apply it to the conditions there.

The Grace Bros. fleet is maintained and costed to much closer limits than is common in Australia, where the normal procedure is virtually to run the vehicles until they drop, preventive maintenance being considered a waste of time.

Seventy-nine vehicles are employed on removals work and the remaining 51 comprise the delivery fleet, which is not engaged in an earning capacity. The removals fleet consists of 12 Leyland, principally Tigers, Titans and Comets, 11 Albion, five Thorny

croft, 30 Bedford, two Austin, four Federal, two Dodge pick-ups and an International pick-up. The Leyland, Albion and Thornycroft vehicles all have oil engines.

Apart from the pick-ups, all these chassis have pantechnicon bodies. In addition to the pantechnicons there are nine Bedford and Albion platform trucks, which are used solely for carrying crated shipments from the packing rooms to the wharves. The delivery fleet consists basically of Austin, Bedford and Chevrolet vehicles.

All pantechnicon bodywork is built to Grace Bros.' design, the majority of the work being executed • by Messrs. L. S. Fitch and Sons, of Sydney.

During the past three years timberfloored all-metal bodies have been used. At the time of my visit, experiments were being conducted with an all-aluminium vehicle in which even the floor is of light alloy. A saving in weight of approximately 13 cwt. over a conventional van has been achieved, and it is probable that future vehicles will be built on these lines.

The vehicles are based at four depots, three of which are in New South Wales. The Camperdown depot serves the south side of Sydney Harbour for metropolitan work and houses the inter-state depot, packing and shipping rooms, crate-making factory, cabinet-making and polishing departments, and the maintenance workshop. There are 40 vehicles allocated to this depot, which also controls seven depositories, all within a radius of a mile.

Metropolitan work north of Sydney Harbour is handled from the Artarmon depot, which has 20 vehicles at its disposal. The headquarters for the country removal service, which covers the whole of New South Wales, is at Artarmon. Shipping and packing work is also carried out there, and local deliveries of small lots are made. The Artarmon depot controls three depositories within a mile radius.

Fleet Distribution At Parramatta, 15 miles out of Sydney, there is the third New South Wales depot, which has five removal vehicles and a depository to look after. The remaining depot is in Brisbane, Queensland, where there are 20 vehicles and two depositories. From Brisbane are run inter-state services and metropolitan removals, and shipping and packing.

From these depots the whole of the Commonwealth, with the exception of the Northern Territory, the north part of West Australia and the island state of Tasmania, is covered. When I asked Mr. Reedman if the area was served "by road," he replied that in far too many cases the area served had no roads— certainly not as we know them in Britain.

It is virtually impossible to use mechanical aids for loading and unloading in the removals business. Grace Bros. do, however, wherever possible, employ skids and dollies for moving cases and heavy items. An ingenious aid to lifting is used, consisting of a leather strap which buckles round one shoulder and underneath the item to be lifted, thus leaving a man's hands free to balance the job. These straps are used principally by two-men teams.

Mechanical Aids

Most depositories have large vehicle lifts in them to enable vans to be taken up to the appropriate floor for loading and unloading, so that the amount of manhandling necessary is much reduced.

The flow of business is reasonably constant throughout the year and most vehicles are kept on the move the whole time.

The removals division alone covers between 14m. and 2.7m. miles a year, and the total mileage of the delivery fleet is close on 500,000 per year. Inter-state vehicles average 48,000 miles per year, country vehicles cover 40,000, whilst vans employed in metropolitan areas

average 12,000 miles a year. Approximately 570,000 cu. tons are handled each year by the removals division, a cu. ton being reckoned at 40 Cu. ft.

Mr. Reedman considers Sydney to be the removal man's nightmare. It is a hilly town and many homes are built in places difficult of access. It is not uncommon, for instance, to find anything up to 200 steps leading to a home built on a hill or a waterfront.

Shops provide difficulties, as most of them have canopies which reach

out over the pavement. It is not unusual to see furniture being removed from upper floors, across the canopy, over the roof of the vehicle, down to the ground and so into the

pantechnicon. Removals from the rear of such premises are usually impossible, because of the lack of suitable accommodating roads.

Deliveries sometimes have to be made in very narrow streets where the parking of a large vehicle would prevent trams from passing. In such cases, Grace Bros. have to apply to the local transport board for the suspension of that particular tram route until the removal or delivery is completed. To give some idea of the traffic congestion in Sydney, Mr, Reedman quoted the example of a vehicle crossing from the city centre on the North Shore to a point four miles distant on the south side of the harbour. This journey usually takes

at least an hour and, naturally, this delay adds appreciably to the overall cost of such removals.

The removals fleet is controlled by a number of branch managers, each of whom is responsible for the efficient operation of his vehicles and the correct allocation of work.

The no-profit-earning section is split up in parcels, furniture and longdistance delivery services and each section has its own manager. All branches and sections are answerable to Mr. Reedman, but each section has its own garage manager who is responsible for keeping his vehicles properly maintained and on the road.

It is characteristic of removals work in Australia generally, and of

country districts in particular, that customers leave their arrangements until the last moment, and only three days' notice is usual. Customers are equally prepared to "tear up their roots" and move on short notice if they know a vehicle will be passing through the district and that they can, therefore, save a large sum of money.

Were it not possible for some people to take advantage of putting their belongings on to a part-loaded vehicle, thereby saving themselves great expense, there are many who would be forced to leave their personal possessions behind.

The consignment procedure for overseas removals is that after inspection by an estimator the goods are sent to one of the packing and shipping depots to be wrapped, listed and packed. Grace Bros. conduct a large shipping business, sending and receiving consignments from all over the world. They have their own Customs offices and bond stores, and many large organizations make use of the services of the company for their overseas executives.

Grace Bros. are in constant demand for office and factory removal services. One recent large job of this. nature concerned the removal of the Sydney Morning Herald from an 11-storey building to a 14-storey one. The removal took over a month, working seven days a week. There were no lifts available in the new building, which meant that cranes and manpower had to be used Another large job was the removal of the Parke Davis factory from Alexandra to Carringba, a distance of 11 miles. Machinery, stock, fixtures, fittings and office and laboratory equipment were moved without disturbing the production of the factory, and this job, which took three weeks to plan, was undertaken in three months.

Fleet costing is being revised constantly and is reviewed twice a year. In the case of metropolitan removals, it is based on an hourly rate for the pantechnicon and two men, and for country removals, on the rate per mile or a lump sum based on mileage. Inter-State removals are costed on a rate per cu. ton for the distance involved.

Vehicles are depreciated over eight years, and at intervals during each year large organizations, such as Grace Bros., submit costing figures to the costing committee of the New South Wales Master Carriers' Association, which acts as a price-control authority and sets the rate for the trade.

An incentive scheme has been adopted throughout the organization by which about 1 per cent. of the total turnover is shared pro rata among the staff, according to individual effort and standing within the organization. Employees receive various emoluments additional to their normal pay, such as "rain money" when working in Queensland during the rainy weather, and "strap money" when working with the lifting straps.

Operations in the Bush

Operational difficulties, in addition to those applying to the large cities, greatly affect transport in the bush. Flooding of roads is frequent and 4-ft.-diameter wombat holes in country roads play havoc with tyres. Malice scrub roots are frequently found sticking up through the road surfaces and pierce tyres quite easily. Plagues of grasshoppers have also interrupted services in the past.

Most drivers are prepared for roadside repairs, especially on the Adelaide—Perth run, which is operated by East-West Removals, Ltd., an associated company of Grace Bros.

The Leyland Hippo used on this run has a 54-cu.-ton body, does one round trip every three weeks, the 1,777 miles from Adelaide to Perth taking six days. The driver travels alone and carries fresh water, fuel, food and tools in compartments below the main body floor.

During the pioneering runs, which were made with a Leyland Titan pantechnicon, five tyre blow-outs per trip were common. This East-West Removals trip, incidentally, completes the round-Australia circuit between Brisbane and Perth.

Owner-driver Removals One of Mr. Reedman's principal complaints concerns rival removal undertakings employing ownerdrivers. These firms are able to operate quicker services at cut rates because the drivers, being one-man operators, are not particularly concerned about union and police regulations which restrict the number of hours worked per day.

They are principally concerned with getting one job over as quickly as possible, so that they are free to do the next one. With the high cost of removals, the people can hardly be blamed for using a cheaper service and taking the risk of furniture arriving damaged. Grace Bros., however, are determined to continue to give the best possible service, even if it does cost a little more, and the number of customers on their books is sufficient to justify their policy.