Live, on show, at Sun City:
'The bottom of the barrel'

If ever the bottom of a barrel can be reached, The Road Freight Association managed to reach it at its annual conference held at Sun City in June. For the first time ever, FleetWatch was invited to attend an RFA event - although on a restricted basis limited to a dinner followed by the final morning's proceedings. It is obvious that full access to RFA happenings is still being denied to all media. Oh yes, the invite included the lunch that followed the morning's session - a lunch sponsored at huge cost by DaimlerChrysler with the price including MAN branded sugar packets on each table. Oops! On the point of 'huge cost, everything was put on at huge cost and what I observed during the short time I was there was a disgusting waste of money which could have been put to far better use in far more constructive endeavours than what was essentially a talk shop attended by suppliers.

I really felt for the suppliers who had put in hundreds of thousands of Rand - yes, we're talking hundreds of thousands, not thousands - in the hope of interfacing and showing solid support for their customers, the transport operators, which the RFA is supposed to represent. Alas, all they got for their money was constant interface with their opposition. The members of the RFA were not there. And it's not the first time this has happened. I recall two years ago one of the suppliers saying to me after getting back from that year's RFA bash held at some 'hardship' venue like Mauritius: "That's the first time I've spent R50 000 to watch my opposition drink my liquor." A similar sentiment was expressed this year in the dinner speech made by Pieter Fourie, CEO of Tyco Trucks, who has International, DAF and Renault under his umbrella. Between these three companies, they ploughed a 'whack' - and I mean a 'whack' - of money into the RFA event and it was obvious that Fourie was more than a little peeved off on the type of return he was getting on his investment when he stood at the podium and said. "I don't mind buying my opposition a drink, but not too often." It was a diplomatic way of expressing his disappointment at the lack of operators present.
 

THIS WAS the last ‘business’ session on the Friday morning. Lots of empty seats with a mere handful of transport operators sitting among the crowd of suppliers on the other side of the room. The dinners also ‘boasted’ empty tables for which the sponsors had paid huge sums of money. The golf courses were full though. Is all this waste really needed?

And that was one of the main failings I observed. There were a mere handful of transport operators compared to the suppliers who were there in their droves - and had signed big cheques to be there. A game was started called 'spot the operator'. No-one won. And those operators who were there seemed to spend more time on the golf courses than sitting in the 'business' sessions. One guy told me afterwards that he had used the opportunity to hone his golfing skills by playing every day. He never attended one business session. If there were, say, 80 or so operators there and they were all out on the golf courses, then the finger could be pointed at the operators for being slack. However, 'guesstimates' ranged from a low of 8 to a high of 16 transport operators who actually went to Sun City for the conference. That tells me that some serious rethinking needs to be done by the RFA in terms of its membership offerings because in essence, the members voted with their feet - and the scary thing is that there were no feet there.

To Sipho Khumalo, CEO of the RFA who invited FleetWatch to the event, I apologise to you and your Board for having to report on the conference in this vein. After all, it is the first time you have opened the event - albeit only partially - to the wider and non-partisan press and it would have been great for us to have come away with stories of glowing success. FleetWatch is not now, and never has been, anti-RFA. However, it's no use us trying to pretend that all was well in the Sun City camp when the camp was actually deserted. I could have taken photographs of happy people from Mercedes-Benz drinking and eating the fare paid for by Tyco and pretended all was well. But no. That's not what FleetWatch is about and the point is: That's not what the RFA should be about either. Khumalo spelt out some grand plans for the future of the RFA and if they are implemented, things look sort of OK. However, what I didn't see in those plans was anything related to canning this useless annual event and concentrating on the more pressing issues at hand. I saw no value being added. All I saw was a waste of good money spent by suppliers in feeding their opposition - and that ain't what this industry is all about.

Patrick O'Leary
Managing Editor