Raylene Dale’s plunge into commercial road transport was a long time coming.
Like many of those who work in the world of transport and its various spokes, the influence of transport was strong and felt from the beginning, with her father working on a container ship.
This presence in Raylene’s life only continued as both her sister and husband became truck drivers, too. Despite the early, persistent exposure, Raylene’s early obsession was not with that transport world, but rather cars.
“I’ve always had such a passion for cars, for as long as I can remember,” she says.
“That passion actually took me into the car industry, where I worked for a very long time.”
For two decades, Raylene explored and mastered the ins and outs of the automotive industry’s different challenges, working in both customer service and operational roles for an assortment of notable car dealerships and service providers.
Over the years, it became evident that the mystery that inspired Raylene’s excitement for the sector had dwindled with familiarity.
Roads previously untravelled were now well mapped. Raylene needed something new.
“I am 100 per cent someone who needs to be challenged,” she explains.
“I need problems to solve and things to go wrong so that I can fix them. After spending so much time with cars, I wasn’t really under those pressures anymore so I decided to move.”
Because of her exposure to transport and logistics both in her childhood and adulthood, Raylene didn’t think the move from cars to trucks would be too big of a jump, at least at first.
“In a certain way, the car industry and transport industry are very similar to each other,” she says.
“There’s a shared niche there. It wasn’t hard for my love of cars to turn into a love for trucks.”
Jumping into the world of commercial transport with some applicable skills from her previous career certainly helped, too.
Raylene’s very first role was that of a short-term team leader and utilised much of the customer service experience that she had developed over the past 20 years.
“I was basically working in customer service for my first transport role,” she recalls.
“It was critical to my development, though. I’m a big believer in implementing customer service into any job. If you know how to do it, you can apply it anywhere — and it needs to be applied everywhere.”
Additionally, the role served as a blueprint for bigger things to come, which Raylene took full advantage of in order to learn the ropes as quickly as she could. It was the perfect opportunity.
“I learned so much in that first role,” Raylene adds. “Mainly how transport actually works. The team lead role was very transport-oriented, not just customer-focused, so it was a great introduction into what was a new world for me at the time.”
She soon tackled how to move freight, how to coordinate with floor staff to ensure consignments were moving at a certain time, and a wealth of other nitty gritty details surrounding it.
These fundamental lessons were important as she moved up and moved on, inevitably outgrowing the challenges of that first role leaving a craving for something more.
This led her to national transport and logistics service, Freight Assist Australia — a move which gave her the high-octane pressure she was after.
“While I did enjoy my first role and learn so much, I knew there was so much more in transport that I could experience,” Raylene says.
“That role predominantly focused on flooring. Whereas Freight Assist Australia was moving pallets of all shapes and sizes.
“It’s also a family-owned and run operation, and from everything I could see, the company really invested in its staff. I wanted to give it a go and see what I could do there.”
Joining the Freight Assist Australia team nearly four years ago, Raylene first met with the company owner and director, Dean Wrigley, who helped to manage her great expectations somewhat.
“I told Dean what I wanted to do, what I aspire to, and he told me ‘not a chance’, because I was way too green at the time,” she says.
“But over time, opportunities in the business rose as positions became free. Dean mentored me to a place where I was able to take one of them, so I really owe my growth in the business to him.”
This mentorship, along with Raylene’s trademark hard work, has eventuated in her working as an Operations Manager for the transport outfit and, more recently, as National Linehaul Manager.
“I took on the National Linehaul Manager role in August last year, in conjunction with my current role as an Operations Manager in Melbourne,” she says.
“The previous linehaul manager had resigned, and I filled that void while we worked to replace that position more permanently. What I identified quickly, however, was that it really made sense for me to fill both roles. From a cost perspective, a customer perspective, an operations perspective. If I knew our business movements out of Melbourne, then I was able to get a better outcome for the business overall.”
With these two roles seemingly going hand-in-hand, Raylene had much ground to cover.
Being surrounded by peers with considerably more experience in their respective transport roles, Raylene studied and learned constantly, propelled in part by on-the-job exposure, to become the best at what she was doing. And she’s been loving every minute of it.
“It hasn’t been easy to prove my way in this space with so many knowledgeable people, but any time I didn’t know something then I would do my best to learn it until I knew it back-to-front,” she says.
“The role challenges me daily, hourly sometimes. But I don’t think I’d want it any other way.”
This work seems to have paid off. In her tenure across these two positions, she’s overseen some big wins.
As National Linehaul Manager, Raylene specifically oversaw the successful launch of Freight Assist Australia’s A-double and B-triple range of units onto the company’s transport network, which delivered a range of benefits.
“The launch of these ranges really helped the business to maximise its units and equipment,” she says.
“Pulling it off was a big task. It was a matter of understanding the equipment, understanding the freight, and working with the floor staff to make sure that each trailer was maximised with what it could carry.”
That also required much effort. It’s the kind of work project that doesn’t lend itself to rest days, but Raylene in her words is “okay with that.”
Much of Raylene’s operational efforts have even extended to transforming and strengthening work culture at Freight Assist Australia, with a particular focus on its drivers.
“I’m also really proud of how we’ve been able to give credit to our drivers,” she says. “I really believe that in this industry, drivers don’t get recognised the way that they should because they spend all their time on the road. But without them, freight doesn’t move.”
The team will send Raylene photos while they’re out on transport runs, and she amplifies these across the company. It’s helped to change the culture within the depot by engaging the relationship between staff.
Freight Assist Australia’s will soon be bracing for the incoming peak season, which Raylene can’t wait for.
“It’s going to be full-speed ahead pretty soon,” she says.
“We’ve also got some major clients coming on board, which will be super exciting. The key is to keep our finger on the pulse. Our freight is moving. Our staff are happy. That’s all we can ask for.”
