Flexibility is key in volatile African market

“The biggest challenge in the consolidation business is getting the necessary clients to fill up the vehicle. Fill it up half way and you are losing money. But you are possibly losing clients if you are slow to depart,” said Donovan Schipper, operations director at Truck Hire SA. “Our practice is we can’t hold up waiting for a consignment to show up. We have to be upfront and forthcoming with other clients,” Schipper said, admitting that determining when to move out a shipment can be an art and not a science. “Consolidators are failing because it is not a constant business,” he said. “The success of the consolidation business depends completely on where the clients are. Unless you are on a long-term contract it is an ad hoc business. For example, we are doing work with 20 engineers in a mining project, and each engineer may have three projects – one in Botswana, one in Mozambique and one in Zambia. They need consolidations going to different destinations one month, then three months later, then six months later, and then it is quiet for a while,” Schipper said. Truck Hire SA’s head office is in Botswana, and it roadfreights out of Johannesburg to all SADC countries except Swaziland. “Botswana business is down and Zambia has picked up, so you have to be flexible – in this case making sure trucks are registered in Zambia. We would have to re-register vehicles for Zimbabwe, for example, if we moved more shipments that way. But this can also limit you because if you decide to register in a country it is not easy to re-register all the time,” Schipper said.