Originally conceived with the timber industry in mind, today sideloaders are commonplace at container parks and in landside operations.
Engine hours for sideloader tasks are high intensity. Trucks must idle for large periods and movements, when they occur, are short and sharp usually close-by or within the confines of an inner metropolitan area.
That operational precinct for Dionysius Transport is in and around the Port of Brisbane where Beven Dionysius has helmed the business for the better part of 40 years.
Working out of the suburb of Morningside, the company also runs a 20,000m² warehouse where they unpack and pack exports, imports and redeliver on Tautliners albeit these represent less than 20 per cent of the fleet.
Sideloader transport is the main remit of the business, which along with its 30 trucks, includes two reachstackers that unload containers 24 hours a day.
While Beven’s vehicles don’t amass high kilometres, averaging, at most, 200,000kms a year, the duty cycle is punishing and during the formative years of the business a host of different vehicles were trialled before he safely arrived at the DAF CF as the truck platform best suited to the challenges of his operations.
“We’re not going to tick up what they do on Outback Truckers. Some of those guys do 5,000 kilometres a week. That’s a lot,” he tells Prime Mover.
“If we do 250kms in a day, for instance with a couple of trips to Rocklea, that is on the higher side. But it’s more the hours in the truck than the travel.”
End of life for a vehicle will often only equate to 450,000 kilometres. There is, however, 900 idle hours attached to that final figure. The truck, put another way, is effectively always on.
Over the years Beven has encountered trouble with overheated drivelines and AdBlue engine derating. This informs his fleet management.
“DAF are the go-to vehicle for me because they are so reliable,” he says. “They don’t breakdown with turbos or engines. Aside from an air valve here and there that can need replacing overall for me they are very reliable.”
DAF as a dependable force in the fleet dictates subsequent loyalty. The first DAF was introduced into the business 20 years ago — a 460hp DAF CF95 with a ZF gearbox.
“When they eventually went to automated gearboxes it worked out better for me,” says Beven.
“I wouldn’t have a gearstick in my fleet for the quality of driver now. We don’t have the old school drivers anymore who can change gears. We don’t have clutches anymore. I’ve seen too many clutch brakes wrecked. Now they’ve got the AMTs in them and that’s money saved for me.”
Dionysius Transport has 16 DAFs in the fleet along with six Mercedes-Benz prime movers, three Macks, and a Kenworth.
A fleet big enough to give him ‘a headache’ Beven jokes. An inhouse workshop with two full time mechanics is equipped with truck lifts. They service the DAFs every 25,000 kilometres.
The Mercedes-Benz are done at 30,000kms.
“My mechanics are pretty good and we do our own tyres and services. There’s no use skipping a service. As soon as you don’t fix something or look after something you’re going to have a problem,” says Beven.
“And normally that problem will occur halfway down to the Gold Coast or on the other side of Toowoomba or somewhere a long way away. There’s no use in not servicing vehicles. That’s where you make your money.”
Beven also has a welder on call. For anything the workshop is unable to fix they will revert to the Brown and Hurley dealership and point of call, sales manager Mark Holden.
As soon as the trucks get to five years old Beven trades them in as part of his fleet protocol. This accounts for R&M and depreciation.
Around the port precinct the fleet also runs four A-doubles spearheaded by Euro 6 compliant DAF CF530s in addition to an eight-wheeler Super dog and a six-wheeler single dog.
These combinations are primarily used for dropping or picking up empty containers with the occasional light TEU thrown in.
The single dog handles up to eight tonnes while the eight-wheeler has a payload of 15 tonne.
“They’re very versatile, sometimes they’re better than a semi because you can get in and out of places with greater ease,” says Beven.
“It’s a lot like having a motor car rather than having a trailer jackknife trying to get it into a place. But if you’ve got a 40 or a heavy box you’ve got to use a big lifter.”
The unit is hooked up with hydraulics and a PTO. Lifters run off the hydraulics for a vast improvement in tare weight via use of a power pack. By doing away with the petrol motor there is no need for a battery which alleviates downtime for servicing and having to buy replacement motors.
“You just click your PTO into gear and that runs the hydraulics and you clip onto your container pins and they’ll lift them like a forklift and put them on the ground,” says Beven.
“But you’ve got to unplug if you want to take it off the truck because the sixth wheel has got a tray on it. I can use it for pallets. Its versatile. You can use it for anything. You can use it for a flat container. Or you can use it for a sideloader. We just unplug all the hydraulics and electronics, by taking it off to the side with a forklift and away you go.”
Brown and Hurley Yatala fitted the hydraulics on the 8×4 before Hammar married it up connecting all the hoses to the PTO ahead of ensuring it was running smoothly.
The eight-wheeler, which is only four months old, is also a DAF.
“DAF is the go-to for that 8×4 axle configuration,” adds Beven.
“The visibility to see out of them is first class, the turning circle second-to-none. I had one of my drivers trading up and he said to me, ‘can you get me a day cab DAF?’ That’s how much he liked it. They pull well. They’ve got the 530s in them. We originally had the 460hp engine, so they’ve stepped up the horsepower a little bit for our spec. I recommend it to anyone. The service kit is well priced. Pricewise they are competitive.”
That said, there are four prime movers with sleeper cabs to run linehaul in the fleet.
“The competitive side of the transport industry means if you need to bring something up then you need to bring something back for any serious distance,” Beven explains.
“I’ve been down to Melbourne a couple of times in DAFs to pick up trailers from CIMC over the years. We’ve bought 15 or 20 brand new trailers from them. You’d come back and you wouldn’t feel as if you’d been away. If you get out of a bonneted truck on that trip it flogs you around like you’re a pea in a bottle.”
While Dionysius Transport is into its fifth decade as a carrier, sideloading is, by comparison, relatively new in the business with the first Steelbro sideloader introduced just over 20 years ago.
Initially, it was a boon for the business. But once the initial excitement wore off Beven realised in order to adequately service his customers he needed another.
“I would take a box to Brendale and the next minute you had to pick up a box from Yatala and then have to go to Carroll Park and come back via Rocklea,” recalls Beven.
“It was a matter of resources. Having the one sideloader wasn’t enough to meet the demand so I bought two. But it was another case of picking up more work but not being able to cover it all around Brisbane. So, I added a third and a fourth. I just kept going.”
That’s how a business model changes, gradually and then suddenly. Beven, by way of backstory, began life as a driver for someone with five trucks who carted toilet paper for Bowater-Scott.
When the opportunity arose for Beven to buy one of the trucks, he jumped at it purchasing an IVECO 1810 ACCO with a trailer in partnership with another driver.
Beven ended up with outright ownership. Through a year of hard labour, he kept the work coming in for the vehicle, attracting new contracts with it.
From one truck he went to two. Two soon became three. Three became four. By the time he had five trucks he was forced to move out of the acre he had in Heritage Park because there were too many vehicles to the displeasure of his neighbours.
From there he moved to Hennant and eventually to where he has been stationed for the last 12 years.
But a major turning point occurred when a rival brought in a sideloader from New Zealand, taking some of Beven’s work. It was pretext enough for his initial investment in that first sideloader.
“The business evolved with the environment,” says Beven. “One thing suddenly becomes another.”
Dionysius Transport eventually bought its first Hammar sideloader. So impressed with it that’s now all Beven opts to run in the fleet.
A record volume of 1.62 million TEUs was handled through the Port of Brisbane for the last financial year. It’s a 7.8 per cent increase in total tonnage to 34.9 million tonnes of trade on the year prior.
Those numbers can’t but help change dynamics in the container cartage sector.
Competition is now more cutthroat. One of the inherent challenges for the business is to resist new entrants and the international shipping conglomerates that have begun to offer door-to-door services, often by way of outsourcing to subcontractors with little to no experience willing to undercut by significant margins.
“They can offer a service to your door in which they pick up their container on the truck, pack the container, put it on their ship, send it to Australia and then have their brokers clear it and have their truck pick it up and deliver it direct to the destination and then have one of their trucks take it back and dehire it,” says Beven.
“By doing this they’re cutting out the transport brokers. A container from America to Australia can be done for say $5,000 and they’ll say they can do it for $3,000. They own everything on the chain. That’s effecting us as well.”
But with trillions of dollars in backing behind them, the shipping conglomerates, without complete oversight on the chain, are just as vulnerable to the weakest links. In one such case Beven lost a contract to one of these shipping powerhouses.
But in less than 12 months they had it back. Nearly half a century of dedicated service brings with it invaluable experience and expertise.
That makes Dionysius Transport one of the ends in the end-to-end services often talked about in supply chains.
But if the “centre cannot hold” as Yeats famously once reminded us, those ends will have no anchor points.
“Nowadays, you’ve got to try and be competitive with the rest of the world. When you quote on a job it usually comes down to the last five dollars that wins or loses it in this day and age,” says Beven.
“I try to be loyal to the people I deal with and you like for it to be reciprocated. Some days it does feel like there are more hurdles and red tape to get through.”
He quips, “But it is what it is I suppose. In the end I was the one who created this bloody monster.”
