In mid-December Jason*, from Greener Golf Club* in Sydney, purchased a self-bunded diesel tank from Australian Bunded Tanks* in regional Victoria, but he had no way to collect it.
What is a Self-Bunded Tank?
For those interested, a self-bunded tank is essentially a tank within a tank, with double steel walls to allow for safe storage of potentially harmful liquids. It’s an extremely versatile solution, as it can be conveniently relocated on site, and the largest can store up to 150,000 litres of fuel. This means that on sites where large vehicles and machines are often being used, employees don’t need to leave in order to refuel, saving both time and money. It is not, however, the easiest item to transport.
To add to his dilemma, it wasn’t going to be ready for pickup before the 16th of December, and Jason needed it before Christmas.
He contacted Freight Quote Australia.
When we received his initial enquiry, it didn’t seem like it would be a problem for us to meet his requested delivery deadline, despite the fact that he didn’t have a forklift available on site in Sydney to unload the tank. We initially planned to use a truck with a tail-lift, however the tank weighed over 1000kgs so we had to look for another solution.
We were going to need a lorry mounted crane, often called a HIAB. This was going make meeting his request a lot more challenging, as they are notoriously busy towards the end of the year, when everyone is trying to get their bulky items moved before Christmas. All the same, we had 5 business days to work with so we were confident we could get the job done, perhaps even with a day to spare.
The first hurdle arose when, due to the remote pick-up location and the size of the tank, there were no vehicles available to pick it up on the 16th. This immediately put us on the back foot, although we were still optimistic that the tank would arrive in the Sydney depot on the 22nd, before then being delivered to the golf club on the 23rd.
The real issue arose when Jason called Freight Quote Australia on Tuesday to advise that there was going to be no-one on site on Friday, so the tank had to be delivered on Thursday! At this point, there was no way for us to speed up the delivery of the tank to the Sydney depot. All we could hope for was that it would arrive early enough on Thursday morning, so that it would make it onto a HIAB that was already doing deliveries in Sydney that day.
We contacted the depot first thing on Thursday morning, and were informed that it hadn’t made it. It was sitting there at the depot, but as it hadn’t arrived early enough to make it onto that day’s HIAB run, there was no way it would get delivered. We scrambled to contact several other transport providers, to see if there were any available HIAB’s that day…
Fortunately, there was one available in the afternoon, and the tank was duly taken from the depot to the golf club and delivered without further delay, to the relief of Jason and his team down at Greener Golf Club. A great way to finish off the year.
*Names and places in this article have been changed.