AY after day of superb autumn weather in SW Victoria. Blue sky, no wind, temperature up to 23° – and I’m building roads. Okay, not freeways with all the stress that goes with traffic management, environmental and public relations issues and keeping track of a budget where one day down rings alarm bells on the project’s critical path.
No, just internal roads within various blue-gum plantations ready for the commencement of harvesting in 2009 in the Green Triangle. My specifications are pretty simple really, the industry standard of width 4m on a formation that is around (many road builders would love that word around instead of the specification to the millimetre) 300 mm above the existing ground level topped off with 200 mm of compacted limestone. This means we want 300 mm out of the truck, or each load of around 22m3 tipped every 18m.
Lack experience
I am particularly chuffed because “Stewie” the operator of a faithful and well-maintained Cat 12G grader cheerfully confesses that he has never built a road, but is picking it up very quickly. He has spent time in graders undertaking the range of works that plantation contractors undertake – in particular firebreaks and he is a natural operator across a wide range of gear. And he is willing to learn.
Stewie’s employer, Paul runs a contracting business that undertakes just about everything involved in plantation development and maintenance from site preparation to insect control and weed management. He too hasn’t built many roads but is keen and willing to have a go.
The end result, hammered down with a 12t smooth drum is impressive and one I am confident will withstand the rigors of constant heavy traffic in the middle of winter – that is if we ever get one! However the memories of what winter can be like in my native Tasmania and stories I hear in SW Victoria – “you wait until we get a normal winter” still scare me. Visions of millions of dollars of harvesting equipment and trucks and trailers parked up in a bog ensure that I am catering for the winter that we might get – but probably won’t.
GEM is a gem
A visit to the gravel pit where four trucks are carting 17 km assures me all is well as I reflect on what wonderful road building material this orange coloured limestone is. I start to get nostalgic as another traditional green Mack belonging to Gambier Earthmovers (GEM) from Mt Gambier rolls in for another load.
Nostalgic, because I realise that it is 25 years since I last did business with GEM. That was after the devastating bushfires of Ash Wednesday in Feb 1983 when I was CEO of a large Tasmanian contingent involved in the salvage of fire damaged radiata pine – but that’s another story.
Suffice to say, that nothing has changed in the GEM relationship in 25 years. In 1983 I used to constantly ring GEM owner Ian Sutherland to move some gear, put a road in to a storage site, whatever, and the WB ute (GEM green, of course) would arrive to pick me up and away we would go to have a look at the job, and it would be done. Today, I need another truck and it’s there. Same colour too!
Truck drivers
Speaking of trucks brings us to truck drivers – and the shortage thereof. Driving to the football at Geelong (a long way) with a couple of guys in the business we were lamenting the shortage of truck drivers and the reluctance of younger people to take up truck driving. For the money and more particularly for the hours, irregular and long, many younger people with young families are just not prepared to make that sacrifice. And we’re not talking about interstate (a breed of their own), but local work with early starts and increasingly two shifts.
Personally, I believe that the well-trained truck driver is underpaid – and by a long way! The only way we could see for the situation to change is for the reward to increase. Expect an incredible rise in truck driver wages as the “old boys” head to retirement – like from $20/hr to $30/hr. Now that’s an interesting debate.
The definition of optimism is best illustrated by this story from SW Victoria. As part of the massive Wimmera-Mallee pipeline project to take water from grossly inefficient open channels to piped reticulation, a pipeline is to be built shortly from Rocklands Reservoir near the Grampians to supply town water for the regional centre of Hamilton.
Rocklands has been at below five per cent capacity for the last few years and is currently under one per cent. And the drought goes on.
Doug Huett was National Executive Director of the Civil Contractors Federation from 1988-2002. He is now an industry commentator.
Source: Construction Contractor