Softwear and Tear

Bulk palletised freight specialist and logistics company, MRL Global, is the brainchild of software engineer Reza Laghaei.

The emergence of the business, displayed in a bold yoke and azure livery on its newest curtainsiders, comes after something of an unusual inception.

Its presence in the market seemingly born overnight despite a methodical ascent 20 years in the making.

With 20 prime movers in the fleet and another 20 at its beck and call, MRL Global is an express carrier beholden to the motto “superior quality, superior service” where the only complaints they receive from customers tend to result not from being slow, but rather too fast.

“Just this morning I had a customer ask me how we do it so quickly,” says Managing Director Reza Laghaei.

“He wanted to make a change overnight to the consignment and suggested when it arrived this morning at 8.30am that we consider actually slowing down our speed of service.”

It’s fair to say that won’t happen — it’s a point of pride for Reza.

The company owns six depots nationwide with a head office in Milperra, within the greater Canterbury-Bankstown region.

MRL Global offers comprehensive supply chain management solutions including logistics, warehousing, international freight forwarding, and specialised contract logistics freight services.

Clients come from various industries mainly for the forward-thinking, technology-enabled efficiencies MRL Global has embedded in its objective to become a dependable shipping partner.

The foundations for this represent a dramatic break with industry customs.

It was after achieving an advanced diploma in software development and coding that Reza, age 20, was drawn to road transport where he found his talents were soon to flourish.

For his first trick he wrote software that exported data from eBay into an excel that then converted it into an Australia Post format pre-API (Application Programming Interfaces).

In a world of dial up internet technology that effectively made it proprietary software.

Reza shared the technology with a friend who soon suddenly had no use for five staff whose jobs previously were to manually enter data for Australia Post.

“Whereas my software did all that work,” he recalls. “It took approximately five seconds from that point.”

The whole transport component came into being when Reza developed the software for two of his friends.

But they each charged on different price structures. Friend ‘A’ was spending a million dollars and Friend ‘B’ outlaid half that.

But Friend ‘B’s’ prices were 30 per cent cheaper than Friend ‘A’ despite both, at the time, having the same account manager at Australia Post. Reza became close with the account manager.

Over dinner he enquired about starting up his own transport company intrigued by how one friend had managed cheaper rates despite spending much less in overheads.

“In life transport and business generally is about relationships is what the account manager told me,” Reza recalls.

“It’s about who you know, not what you know. That stuck with me.”

Reza, buoyed perhaps by the precocity of youth, then proceeded to ask if he could get cheaper rates if he started up his own company.

He was promptly told he was insane having no prior experience in running a transport business. This didn’t deter him.

Because the Australia Post account manager was on the verge of retirement he eventually agreed to help out Reza, who would at first begin as a broker.

He approached Friend ‘B’ to have his freight transferred to his account.

Before long Friend ‘A’ followed suit. Not long after Reza launched EziShipping™, an online portal with a rate calculator — the first of its kind for freight.

“Once I had more money to invest in technology I did so as fast I could,” he says.

“It was really the first online platform to make the consignment, calculate the freight costs and have the inputs available online with API integration.”

He was an outlier as the only provider, what’s more, with that capability. There was no paper billing.

“It was all online,” he says. “For the entirety of my business life I have not sent out one invoice in the postal mail.”

Inherent in the strategy to bring everything online from the first day was knowing it would lead to better payment outcomes during those crucial early days. Most businesses go bust in the first five years.

“By me emailing customers I was assured 100 per cent they were going to get it,” says Reza.

“Therefore I was also going to get paid earlier.”

He soon put a levy on snail mail which would incur a $50 surcharge.

That was in 2010. The following year MRL Global opened its first warehouse in Bella Vista.

A major turning point came in 2016 when Reza bought out Bill Sampson who had successfully owned and operated Sampson Transport for the last 35 years.

Reza had previously made an offer for the business, but it wasn’t until he learned of its imminent demise that Reza hopped on the first available flight to Melbourne.

“After eight hours of going over his books and negotiations on the Monday we had a deal done,” recalls Reza.

“That company was all pen and paper — literally. No computer. No nothing. We moved all of that into our technology.”

He adds, “I think I lost 30 years in that one year to genuinely convince customers given the amount of abuse I got from the older generations.”

Yet for all the pressure heaped on it, MRL Global continued to grow. Sampson Transport, which had a single semi-trailer operating Melbourne to Adelaide, departing on alternating days and two semis running between Sydney and Melbourne, became Sampson Express.

“Bill did an amazing job. I was very impressed by him,” says Reza.

“He somehow had customers with him for 25 years with no technology. You must be doing something right to be able to command that level of loyalty.”

The fleet composition has been given a dramatic makeover since then. Today MRL Global predominantly runs 42-pallet B-doubles pulled by either a Volvo, Mercedes-Benz or Kenworth cabover prime mover.

The freight is in the main ambient, non-refrigerated and non-dangerous goods on an express service.

“Everything is carried on double dropdeck mezzanine B-double trailers manufactured by Vawdrey,” says Reza.

“When I started looking at buying trailers I spoke to Vawdrey and another competitor. I found Vawdrey a lot more experienced, ready to implement new technology and engineering practices and they handled customers the right way.”

Being able to provide an end-to-end solution has made Vawdrey a premier partner especially for the roadtrain configurations the fleet requires. That includes the design, the build and, just as critically, the permits.

“Vawdrey gets all the permits for all the different routes that we need and gives us the key once the permit is approved and we start driving on it,” he says.

“That made all the difference for us.”

That means MRL Global can concentrate more on the things it wants to focus on as a business. And while there might be cheaper options in the market, Reza states safety for MRL Global was of paramount importance.

“The fee they charge is very reasonable and the money I save where I don’t need to get my national operational manager to spend all that time with all of the bureaucracies at different government levels and different state borders is nothing in comparison to the investment it would require of us,” says Reza.

“This is what Vawdrey does for a living. They know all the loopholes. They know all the contacts and the many other intricacies involved in the process.”

The company drivers certainly make their preference of truck known.

“I like the Kenworths,” says Reza. “They’re built tough, and you really have to know your stuff to work with a Kenworth.”

The Volvos are, however, the most well represented brand in the fleet and along with Mercedes-Benz bring a touch of luxury to the job according to Reza.

“The Volvos and Mercedes are a much different experience. Flip this switch, hit this button, cushiony seats and air suspension,” he says.

“The internal safety systems can’t be taken for granted. Adaptive cruise control is a massive game-changer for industry. A prime mover with close to 36 tonnes in carrying load that can pre-determine the distance between the vehicle in front of it with radar and sensor technology — it’s a marvel.”

One of the advantages the business boasts is its ability to connect to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) whether its TMS or FMS software which enables customer data to come into the MRL system without need for a log-in.

“What happens is, once we deliver all the tracking stages and the POD goes back to your system, you don’t need to leave your system. It’s all in your system,” he explains.

“What that means is as my client your staff are trained to use the software that they have that your company has spent thousands of dollars on. You’re used to that software, but you get all the benefits of all the tracking and all the POD and status updates as if you’re using our software.”

The software offers preselection choices for customers if they want to stipulate a tailgate. That consignment is automatically allocated a tailgate in MRL’s back end. It also firewalls loads so that the right truck with the tailgate capacity for the load is selected.

The same goes for any weight or height restrictions according to the set route. Forklift cubic weight requirements are also factored in.

“Once it’s approved it goes into the driver’s PDA and the driver basically just follows the runs and gets to deliver it and scanning at every stage,” says Reza.

“There’s a lot of these measures in place to ensure it’s a smooth transaction and there’s no hiccups.”

It’s certainly advantageous to have consignments logged in the back end of the system automatically allocated the right truck that fits with the profile of freight.

When MRL Global acquired Sampson Transport, that business employed four customer service people for three semi-trailers. Today there are 20 B-doubles.

“You can imagine the increase in freight volumes,” says Reza.

“We’re at three staff for customer service. We’ve got one less staff in that area, but the volume is 13,000 per cent more.”