Stopping suddenly in a car may cause you to jerk forward in your seat. Stopping suddenly while driving 45,000 litres of fuel around New Zealand roads would cause a rolling wall of liquid energy to hit the back of your cab.
MOVe Fuel driver Mark Butcher says: “It’s a wee bit like sitting on a water bed with lots of little kids jumping on it.
“Sometimes you pull up to the lights and you feel the whole slosh effect … you stop and you’ll have to take your foot off the brake and let it settle, then touch the brake again. You have to be a lot more careful with your driving as opposed to, say, general freight that you can tie down.”
Amid global volatility and heightened anxiety over fuel procurement, consistent supply depends on synchronised distribution networks such as the one MOVe coordinates with Z Energy.
At any given time, 58 MOVe tankers are on New Zealand’s roads. Nationwide over a 24-hour period, MOVe delivers anywhere between 5.5 to 7 million litres per day and fuel deliveries roll out 24/7, 365 days a year.
Precious cargo
On the road with MOVe during a daytime delivery run from Wiri to Z Pokeno, Newsroom gets the experience first hand.
Driving feels a little jerky with the motion of the liquid in the tanks behind us shifting the balance of the truck, particularly as we roll to a stop and take off again in afternoon traffic and at red lights.
We leave bigger gaps ahead of us to ensure safety, the result of which is many more vehicles cutting in front of us than the average Auckland driver would allow.
My driver’s frustration level, however, is low. He is happy to take his time, reflecting a safety-first culture.
Behind the scenes, MOVe’s fleet of tankers takes care of Z’s commercial and retail deliveries using an inventory routing tool called Ortec, which constantly monitors tank levels at Z sites to determine real-time supply needs.
Each shipment of Z’s fuel that comes into the country is discharged at one of 13 terminals within its nationwide network and into a giant tank. Trucks are then stocked from a terminal, after the delivery request is given the green light by a digital system that ensures the vehicles are not being overfilled.
Hayden Garing, general operations manager at MOVe Fuel, says: “It’s a smart system, and everything the team does is all processed on a tablet in real time.
“So it’s live feeding back to our systems and our team to make sure that we monitor that delivery right through from pick-up to delivery, reconciling delivered volume to ensure accurate information at all times in the tank and systems.”
Defensive driving
Drivers work 10-12 hour shifts, delivering around 150,000 litres during each shift to an average of three sites under the watchful eye of a dual-facing camera stationed on the inside of the windscreen.
Butcher says: “In a forecourt scenario, people can just walk right through your work area. The easiest time for deliveries is in the hours of darkness, when there’s less traffic on the road, and less people about.”
Footage of what’s happening on the road and on site can be helpful in the case of an incident; footage from inside the truck cab is monitored by AI to assess driver behaviour.
Garing adds: “We have a dedicated driver training team. We do what we call ‘observations’ on the drivers two or three times a year. We’re constantly focused on safety and training to ensure that fuel always gets to its destination safely.”
MOVe fuel trucks are ‘baffled’, meaning they have around four internal partitions that help reduce the movement of liquid cargo during transportation. These also allow drivers to transport multiple products in each load.
Parking up
After rolling past the famous ice cream shop, we pull into the Z Pokeno truck stop, park and set up a safety cordon around the fill point.
A hose is unpacked from the side of the truck and connected to the fill point; a hole in the raised cement platform beside the pump, with a super-sized plug in it. Filling the station takes around 25 minutes; it can take up to an hour based on fuel stocks and fill point location.
There are routine quality processes that are adhered to: diesel and petrol are unloaded separately to avoid any chance of contamination.
Garing says the fuel delivery system is “a lot more robust than people think”.
“Something people may not be aware of is that our service stations carry what we call a safety stock. So, the service stations and the commercial sites aim to carry three days’ minimum in their tanks at all times; however take today for example, it’ll be at least twice that at nearer eight days of safety stock.
“When we’re doing a delivery we’re not actually delivering when the service station’s out, we’re delivering above a safety line. That means if a ship is running late or in a situation like this with a volatile market, we’ve actually got a buffer of fuel in the ground.”
Service station shortages reported in recent months were a result of many customers changing their behaviour over a short period of time.
“It seemed that customers who were worried about the price continuing to increase, got in and filled their cars up earlier than they may have otherwise.
“This started to chew into safety stock, and in some instances led to stock outs at some sites. We only have so many trucks, and those trucks can only do so many deliveries in a period, so we couldn’t quite keep up.
“It was a significant increase in fuel purchases over a relatively short period despite the actual fuel used not changing much at all.”
Countering cyclones
MOVe scheduling operates five days ahead of time to ensure reliable supply, and a dedicated team is working 24/7 to actively monitor the weather and assess potential disruptions. If weather forecasts throw up the potential of a key transport route becoming blocked then a driver will be sent to stock them up to ensure extra supply in case of delayed delivery.
Garing says it’s not always possible to forecast events but the team has a great deal of experience and range of contingencies in place to keep fuel moving in times of disruption. Occasionally a driver routed to a service station will be disrupted with a weather system coming in quicker than expected and will have to turn around halfway to their delivery. In that situation we have contingencies we can employ to ensure continued supply.
During Cyclone Gabrielle, for example, drivers and routes were adjusted to keep fuel moving between affected regions, with extra effort made to maintain supply for emergency and critical services as well as local communities.
In other instances, Garing says they’ve had drivers get stuck; MOVe will put them up in a motel and wait until they can safely drive out. Full fuel tankers are never left unattended.
“If we were to break down, for example, we would have a security guard. We have relationships with security companies throughout New Zealand, and we’ll put a security guard with that truck during that time to ensure protection of the truck and keep an eye out for any issues.
“But 99 percent of the time we will have it back in a secured yard, or we will turn around. We are very safety conscious and risk averse.”
Worst-case scenarios aside, Butcher says he wishes driving trucks and tankers was more of a recognised trade.
“You earn good money, and it’s a good lifestyle.
“You can get paid to go for a cruise on a nice sunny day, along the Kaikoura coastline. I really enjoy it and am proud of the role we play in keeping New Zealand moving.”
