OPINION: The collapse of Scott’s Refrigerated Logistics is a wake-up call for both large and small operators.
Getting paid on time is something we have to deal with a lot as owner-drivers. Sometimes it’s all we can do to wrestle the money we’ve earned from clients. As if we don’t have enough to deal with already.
For subbies who worked at Scott’s Refrigerated Logistics, with the company now going under, there’s thousands of dollars they’re never going to see again.
Scott’s should be a wakeup call to us all. If even a company that’s Australia’s largest cold chain operator – that doesn’t even have a direct competitor – can go under, there’s something seriously wrong.
What we’ve known for a long time is that the top of the supply chain controls how much money flows down to us. For Scott’s, it wasn’t enough. For the subbies who are going to be thousands out of pocket, and tens of thousands in some cases, it’s not enough.
Everyone’s feeling the squeeze right now. People are struggling to pay their mortgages with so many interest rate rises. Groceries have gone through the roof. For owner-drivers, we’re still dealing with the astronomical fuel costs that see no sign of slowing. I know many of us are trying to make ends meet. Scott’s, on a larger level, has faced exactly what we’ve all been through at some time or another: a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude from customers who won’t pay enough to make a business sustainable.
Once you add in all the other pressures a business has to face – and in the last few years we’ve had plenty to deal with between the pandemic and natural disasters – it’s no wonder so many are on the brink. I feel for the subbies at Scott’s who could be in real trouble if they don’t get all their entitlements back. I feel as well for all the owner-drivers and operators going broke who don’t receive such widespread coverage as Scott’s. Smaller operators don’t make the headlines when it happens to them but it is just as devastating.
Gig concerns
The example of Scott’s isn’t the only thing that shows us that the crisis in our industry is only getting worse. I’ve talked a fair bit before about the gig economy, this ‘new frontier’ that seems completely separate to us but is actually a worrying sign of where our industry is headed without reform.
These gig companies are creeping ever further into our territory. In Australia, we’ve got AmazonFlex doing traditional courier work, and FedEx trying to pull a similar move.
In the US, Europe and others, it’s even worse: the gig economy moving into freight. This is particularly scary for us because it will happen here as well. As owner-drivers we have a lot of control over what we do, and how we do it – part of the reason I’ve stuck with it for so long. If you’re driving trucks as an ‘independent contractor’ for Amazon in the US, all your control disappears along with all your rights.
Now these may all seem like separate issues: the collapse of Scott’s, the rise of the gig economy, external things like the pandemic and bushfires and floods.
But it all comes back to the same thing. That’s greed from big, wealthy clients who get the economic benefit from our work and rake in millions – or even billions – without paying us properly to do it.
RELATED ARTICLE: Voluntary liquidation confirmed fro Scott’s
Trucking is not an industry where you can cut corners and have things be completely fine. Whether we’re owner-drivers, employee drivers or from any other sector, we deserve pay that allows us to do our jobs safely and professionally, while still be able to make a decent living.
That’s why as much as it can seem like we’re isolated as owner-drivers sometimes, we have to be paying attention to what’s going on for everyone else, and we have to be willing to work alongside each other for a better industry. We are an important cog in the system.
I feel for the Scott’s workers now out of a job. There are 1,500 of them. Without clients stepping up and being accountable for their supply chains, Scott’s won’t be the last whether it is another large or a single owner-driver.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though. The likes of Amazon driving down standards will never come to the table unless they’re pushed, but other big companies – and even gig companies – have joined calls for reform. The Federal Government is committed to that reform.
Now we just have to fight like hell to get it over the line and make our industry better for ourselves, our families and everyone involved in it, we deserve it.
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Frank Black has been a long distance owner-driver for more than 30 years. He is a former long-term owner-driver representative on the ATA Council.