Quick Bite: Mainfreight's Tesla trucks & solar sustainability

Published Sep 2, 2024, 12:00 AM

In this quick bite Don Braid, Managing Director of Mainfreight shares how sustainability has been ingrained into the company's operations since its early days, from recycling initiatives, to implementing off-grid solar power and water systems in their facilities worldwide.

Plus, hear more around what Mainfreight's plans are with their electric trucks, if Telsa's will become a part of their fleet, and what are the issues for Electric Vehicles (EVs) when it comes to long-haul transportation?

This quick bite is from our previous episode 'Mainfreight–Where next for the blue trucks?'

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You've had a really strong track. Lookt I guess on sustainability and you know, talking about it and being you know, reporting about what you're doing. I mean, yeah, there been any interesting surprises that have come out of that work for you? And what do you see the kind of key challenges for mainfreight in terms of that sustainability picture.

Well, I think the interesting thing is that we haven't actually got on our soapbox and shouted about what we did from a sustainability point of view. If you look at what Bruce did in the early days, he was always recycling wooden palettes and plastick and the likes in each of the facilities. And then he found a water tank light which was an old milk tank lying on the side of the road and thought about recycling water off the roof. And today that's a big part of what we do with our new facilities. If you think about the new sites and Dannyong, the new site in Adelaide, the sort of eight to eighty five off grid for solar power and water, and the new sites in Dallas and Chicago are exactly the same. Mind you, the Texans thought that we were nuts putting solar on the roof when they're pointing to the ground saying that's where the gas is. But it's our view about what we can do and what we can control in terms of sustainability. And if we had had more companies, particularly here in New Zealand, that actually recycled the water off their roof, we wouldn't have a problem with shortage of water during drought years. Anyway, for us, there's plenty of challenges. I mean, we are running electric vehicles around town in some of the major cities in New Zealand and Australia, but we can't get electric vehicles to run efficiently long haul. You know, we're still waiting on Tesla's long haul vehicle to operate in the States. I think we've had an order place now for three years. Still nothing on the horaz. We've got two electric trucks to what they call drage off the wholf in Long Beach. We've been waiting six months for it and it's just been for both of them and they've been delayed another month. So it's frustra that's frustrating for us because we would like to be more efficient in terms of sustainability across the supply chain for our customers. I think the other interesting thing is the legislation that's changing in Europe. If you are a company that owns or employees two hundred people or more, you have to report your emissions carbon emissions from next year on. It's a legal requirement. And therefore what we've done and what we've reporting is turning heads in terms of customers and looking to I suppose supply chain experts like ourselves who are taking sustainability seriously, so.

It becomes a key selling point.

You think there is absolutely no doubt. And in fact, a sales call we made in in New York a couple of months ago, we produced our sustainability report on paper, the most sustainable paper we can find, and place that on the table with the managing director of that business and he picked it up, flick through it and said, this is exactly what we're looking for. And one month later they've awarded the ocean freight out of Germany to US into the United States. So clearly it strikes accord with our potential customers and we're winning business. As a consequence, investing involves risk, you might lose the money you start with, we recommend talking to a licensed financial advisor. We also recommend reading Product of sclosure documents before deciding to invest.

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