ANYONE who has owned a business knows at some point there comes a defining moment, a decision that changes its future direction.
For Damien Matthews, managing director of the GTS Freight Group, that time came on January 1, 2008, when he bought the family-owned business from father Don.
It was a bold move and some may have thought a little ambitious for a 36-year-old still finding his feet in an industry that is notoriously tough.
But Mr Matthews knew the potential of the business his father started in 1980 and was willing to take the risk.
While he doesn’t sit behind the wheel of his extensive fleet of prime movers, he is firmly in the driver’s seat of the business, steering the future direction of a company that has enjoyed annual “double-digit” growth over past four years.
“I was lucky enough to have a start from my father, but he’d had enough and wanted to move to Queensland — he wanted to sell the business and I wasn’t ready for that,” Mr Matthews said.
“There were major players in the industry ready to buy us out and we quickly worked out the value and six months later I bought the business.
“It was a big step, and I suppose scary if you didn’t have the confidence in yourself and some vision — you need some foresight.
“I believed in it and then it’s a lot of hard work after that to make it happen, make it work.”
And make it work he has.
A decade on, Mr Matthews’ intuition is proving right and his group of companies is among the most successful freight and logistics businesses in Australia, servicing some of the country’s biggest blue-chip businesses.
With more than 30,000 square metres of warehousing and more than 120 B-double prime movers and more than 200 B-double trailer combinations, the business now employs almost 400 full-time, casual and contract workers, with plans to double in the next five years.
Last month GTS trucks covered more than 3.3 million kilometres and every week move between 30,000 and 40,000 pallets.
The fleet’s on-time delivery is tracking at 99.2 per cent, an exceptional number given the many variables involved in the industry.
The rapid growth of the business has been made possible by Mr Matthews’ investment in technology and his commitment to safety and compliance, something he says puts his company at the forefront of the transport industry.
“Our compliance is really well managed and I have a really strong team, which is led by Craig Evans, who has been with me for 30 years,” Mr Matthews said.
“I think we police ourselves harder than what the law would police us.
“It’s not to say we won’t have an accident, but we do a lot of preventative stuff.
“Our track record is we have done 150 million kilometres without a rollover — to the extent we now have forward and rear-facing external cameras and also cameras on the drivers to monitor fatigue or distractions — we’ll know to alert the driver to pull over.
“So there is a lot preventative stuff instead of waiting for an accident to happen.
“What it does is probably puts us in a different category of quality in the transport industry.”
The latest addition to the business’s expansion is its state-of-the-art warehousing operation on Benetook Avenue.
Built just over 12 months ago, it uses autonomous (robot) forklifts for the pick-and-pack function, saving time and money and allowing operation around the clock.
“Now we have interfaced our systems with our customers, the robots go to work before we even know we have orders,” Mr Matthews said.
“When we arrive at work they will have New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory picked and ready for us to load on the trucks manually.
“It certainly helps with efficiencies and allows us to increase the volume of stock we can move.”
Like any business, Mr Matthews has faced some challenges, times when he had to stop and take stock.
“The business had some challenges, some financial challenges at one point and I realised I had to break it up into different components,” Mr Matthews said.
“So we separated the warehousing, the workshop and we separated the line-haul company and we established our own line-haul company (G1 Logistics).
“What it has done is it gives us a lot more understanding of our direct line-haul cost so we can be a lot more competitive with our customers.
“A lot of businesses have a lot overheads and overheads drain the vision of the actual cost.
“What this has done is allow us to see exactly what our our line-haul business costs are, where we cut costs and where we can’t and that’s an important part of our tender processes.”
Mr Matthews’ commitment to Sunraysia is unwavering and, while he spends a lot of time in the city, he can’t wait to get home.
“I’m a country boy, so I don’t really want to live in the city — I don’t mind travelling to the city for business, but I love coming home,” Mr Matthews said.
“I love supporting our region and I’d like to think I do a lot for it and I will continue to do more.
“I have some big ambitions — I’m not where I want to be, I want to create a lot more jobs yet.”
