Although it mainly concentrates on Sydney container coverage, some of the longest runs PJG Transport handles are to Melbourne, with containers for fumigation. The trucks are more normally running around the Sydney region as well as heading out of the city as far as Taree, Newcastle, Dubbo and Canberra.
The business has changed considerably as it has gone through its growing stage. Not all of the work involves going into Port Botany and hauling out loaded boxes. With a depot within the Enfield Intermodal Logistics Centre, the operation brings quite few of its boxes out to Enfield via the train for delivery on from this home-base.
Between 40 to 50 containers arrive in Enfield by train each week for PJG. This works okay when the freight on board is not time sensitive. The railway can’t commit to getting a particular container to the terminal at a specific time. Urgent customers boxes have to be collected directly from the stevedores.
Being able to work out of a location like the Enfield depot has been a boon to the business. There is less time wasted dealing with the never-ending congestion in and around the stevedores at Port Botany. Instead the containers run out of a fairly central location for the whole of the Sydney area.
“We were the first operation to properly move into the Enfield facility,” says Peter Gatt one of the business’s owners. “They opened when Pacific National were involved, then they closed it, before it reopened after Linx took it over. We were the first to move in, in June 2018.
“Now, they are really trying to make it work. If it doesn’t work for us, it doesn’t work for them. When we book 30 boxes into their system, they will allocate 30 slots on the train for us.”
Overall, the number of containers arriving for PJG by train makes up around 30 per cent of all the containers the company will deliver every week. The bulk of containers are still coming out of Port Botany by road, but a growing proportion are getting transferred through to intermodal sites like Enfield.
The increasing number of containers being handled by PJG sees the company expanding its reach and in need of expanding its existing 5000m2 to make room for the increased numbers.
Four major clients can take between five and nine containers a day, each. These are often drop and swap movements, a full container is delivered and an empty one is collected. The operation also does some unloading of containers at its own depot, where the freight is then delivered on with flat-tops or curtain-sider as part of its Sydney container coverage.
Side-loaders are becoming a bigger part of the operation with three now in the fleet. There are two B-double sets running in and out of the depot, bringing boxes backwards and forwards between Enfield and Botany. The B-double will also deliver out to customer a few times each week. Peter is eyeing up an A-double set to further increase productivity on the port to depot leg.
The number of A-doubles being used in and out of Port Botany means that the process of setting one up is well established. The trailers makers are set up with the correct specifications and the road managers on the major routes like the one from the port to distribution points like the Enfield facility are able to sign off on each new vehicle relatively quickly.
“We are not big into PBS and A-doubles at the moment, because we have got the train,” says Peter. “If you are bringing in 40 boxes on the train, that’s twenty trips on an A-double.”
Typically, the B-double sets will run four trips to Port Botany and back a day. The time slot system at the port has been much improved. After 50 minutes of waiting for a container the stevedores have to pay the transport operator demurrage in 15 minute increments.
