BP delivers for Canny Carrying

The area between Melbourne and Sydney is arguably one of the country’s key transport corridors. It’s not just connecting Australia’s two largest cities by population, but also home to the iconic Hume Highway, which inspired many a transport business to set up tent in the area.

Canny Carrying is a long-standing road transport specialist based along the Hume, and to keep its fleet motoring along with minimal stoppages, the family-owned company relies on fuel giant BP.

Rod Canny, current Director and son of owner Brian, knows just how valuable BP’s role is in the scheme of things since he himself plays a pivotal role in managing the business. “Currently, we run two diesel bowsers at our Wangaratta head office – a 30,000-litre tank and a 55,000-litre tank, which we added 10 years ago to cope with rising demand and a growing fleet,” says the fourth-generation member of the Canny family.

“On average, each vehicle will come in to refuel once a fortnight. We have about three outlets per tank to accommodate multiple vehicles at a time. If drivers have to go interstate, we have strategic BP outlets they can use to fuel up along the way.”

Incidentally, Canny Carrying was a Castrol distributor for 80 years distributing oils and other lubricants for commercial applications right up until BP acquired Castrol in 2000, and it is still freighting Castrol products today. “In essence, our BP relationship goes back a long time and for many years we were mainly carting BP fuel from Melbourne back to our head office, which we’d distribute to clients from our bowsers in Wangaratta.”

Despite the association between the two companies stretching more than 50 years, Canny has only been an exclusive BP bulk and BP Plus card client for the past five. But according to Rod, it doesn’t matter what kind of agreements are in place as long as the commitment to customer service is met.

“I suppose at the end of the day it’s all about the profits the company brings in,” Rod says. “But it’s ‘loyalty’ that makes the biggest difference on the way there. Loyalty for us is not just about sticking to one client, but it’s the level of customer service and communication that you get from that relationship.

“When our bowser supplies need to be topped up, we’ll simply give BP a call and the next day they’ll have a B-double tanker arrive at our facility. They share the same understanding we do in that ‘time is money’. It goes without saying that to develop such a long standing relationship you need to consistently deliver on time and secondly, the end product must perform as advertised. We feel BP has ticked these boxes time and again.”

To find evidence of that professionalism, one only has to look at Canny Carrying’s long history of success. The story of Canny began back in the late 1890s as a business running horse-drawn carts in the Victorian regional town of Wangaratta, before W. Canny & Sons was formally introduced in 1906 by Bill Canny and his sons Len and Jack.

It wasn’t until 1926 that the Cannys purchased their first truck, which would become the catalyst for expanding the fleet into new industries, such as local petrol, oil and fertiliser transportation. In 1945, grandson Brian joined the business and would eventually inherit the reigns.

Fast-forward to today and the company has established itself as an “expert operator” in the area with the capacity to freight anything from general goods to furniture, wine and fabrics and does so within the parameters of container transport, interstate services, distribution and warehousing. According to Canny, its drivers demanding daily itinerary includes return runs from Wangaratta to a company-owned depot in Derrimut, to Sydney or to Albury, as well as long haul trips to Brisbane and back.

To achieve a “cohesive operation”, Canny uses 30 Kenworth prime movers and more than 50 Krueger-built trailers that predominantly includes skels, curtain-siders and flat tops, with many of those trailers used in B-double configuration. “BP, Kenworth and Krueger are great examples of the fact that once we establish a healthy foothold with a supplier of ours, we stick with them. That’s always been the Canny way and we have built our success around that principle,” Rod concludes.