Truckies still delivering the goods despite lockdown

Hunkered down at home and wondering when lockdown is finally going to end?

 Feel for our local truckies, who have had to keep working throughout the pandemic, trying to maintain strict delivery deadlines while keeping everyone safe and sound.

 “We don’t do interstate travel, but we do have to be COVID-safe when it comes to travel withing NSW,” Ellie Ticehurst from Nagle Transport explained.

 While their vehicles are allowed greater freedom in-out-out of lockdown hotspots, there is a price to pay, she added.

 “We have to fill-out a travel permit every 14 days and then get our team COVID-tested every seven-days,” she explains.

 “We’ve been really busy for which we can only be really grateful at a time like this, we are coping and managing it as best as we can,” Ellie said.

 While shortages and delays throughout our economy due to lockdowns have left some a touch short-tempered, Nagle’s clients have all shown exemplary understanding, she said.

 “All our customers are really understanding, we generally have a really good relationship with them.

 “It hasn’t really pushed-out our ETA’s (estimated time of arrivals) at all, we’ve been pretty consistent about that,” Ellie said.

 The transport company was established in the 1960s to cart beer off the railway to local pubs and has now grown over the past half-century to be one of the most well-known general freight haulers in the region. “My father, Pat Nagle started it about 50 years ago,” Robert Nagle explained last year.

 With 18 trucks and vans now operating out of their Orange base after, Ellie believes that the local company has found some valuable lessons during the past 18-months.

 “We’ve learned how to be very versatile, that’s for sure. Transport can be a very unpredictable business, we’ve learnt new skills to switch-on at any moment to adapt to hold-ups and things,” she explained.

 “We’ll be taking all our COVID-safe management into the future as well, we’ve got to learn to live with this thing,” she added.

 “A lot of our staff have chosen to live with this with a lot of educating on being COVID-safe.”

 Despite the uncertain times we’ve all experienced since February 2020, the company has managed to keep on keeping on, Ellie said.

 “The nature of our work has changed in a positive way, and we haven’t had to put people off.”

 Ellie said that the old truism that the staff are a company’s greatest asset, has been proven by the lockdown.

 “I just want to add, how appreciative we are of our staff who have stuck with us throughout all of this. They’ve all shown great adaptability and commitment,” Ellie concluded.