Land Freight Industry Analysis

2. Analysis 2.1 Industry 2.1.1 Land Freight Industry Land freight industry is an industry which is all about transportation of goods on the land or road from one destination to another destination. Goods that are transported can be light items such as cotton and wool, small item such as button and paper clips and it can also be large item such as individual parts of some machines or it can be heavy item such as cements, sand, rocks and so on. Every day, we can see many types of trucks on road and highway carrying lots of goods depends on the truck size. Different size and height of a truck will decide the weight and size for the goods to be transported.

The mainly products that are transported daily are dry foods, fresh food and vegetables, flowers and plants, packet or parcel, print products, textiles, building materials, raw materials for manufacture and so on. Usually the trucks will combine with sea, rail and air freight when there are international shipments orders. 2.1.2 Analysis tools Types of shipment Under land freight industry, it is usually in the domestic shipping which mean it only transport or carry goods from one place to another within the same country. When the logistician received order from the customer, they will load the goods on the truck and sent it to the destination that customer requested. During the transportation process, it involved trucks and roads only and able to transport the goods by using roads from one state to another state within a country. Today, many land freight industry had already expanded and had the international shipping which sometimes using the bridge to cross among nations such as Malaysia to Singapore. Or else, logistician will have to consider about combination of land freight with air or sea freight in order for shipping the goods to the other nation in what we called international shipping. For example, when Malaysia needs to ship some goods to Korea or U.S, they cannot just depends on trucks but they will need to use either ship or plane in order to ship the goods across the sea between two nations. Types of Trucks As we know that, the main transportation vehicles in land freight industry are trucks. In Malaysia, there are several types of trucks categorised under 3 categories which are small trucks, medium trucks and heavy trucks.

Under the small trucks category, there are mini trucks, pick-up trucks which is trucks with an open-top, rear cargo area at the back, panel trucks which are windowless trucks with no backseat, Cutaway van which is usually used to transport smaller or lighter cargo, and tow trucks which can sometimes be the medium trucks. The tow trucks are used to transport disabled or illegal parked motor vehicles to a specified location [Falco, 2011]. There are five types of tow trucks which differentiated based on its size and equipments.

First is the Boom type of tow trucks which was equipped with an adjustable boom. Second is the tow trucks equipped with hook and chain which is used to drag cars that have steel bumpers. Third are the trucks equipped with wheel-lift which is the improved form from hook and chain. Fourth is the flatbed truck, the entire back of a flatbed truck is fit with a bed and is able to move to the ground level.

The fifth types is the Self-loader Snatcher, it is the combination of boom and wheel-lift to make a quick pickup without any hook to pick up the goods. The maximum weight that can carried by small trucks is only 7.5 tons. For the medium category, there are van, flatbed trucks, medium duty trucks, fire trucks, electric platform trucks which are electric powered trucks with a large flat surface for holding objects to be transport, and box trucks which is also known as cube truck, bob truck or straight truck [Falco, 2011]. Box truck is usually have 4m to 7m in length and usually have a garage door. All the goods can be loaded on the trucks through the door. It can also use as moving trucks to carry home appliances and furniture. The medium trucks can transport goods up to maximum 12 tons.

The third category is the heavy trucks, the trucks under this category are concrete transport trucks, log carrier which is used to carry log, refrigerator truck which is equipped with air conditioner at the cargo area of the trucks and is usually use dto transport foods and beverages, semi-trailer truck which is a truck attached with one or more semi-trailers to carry goods, crane which is a truck equipped with chain, sheaves, and lift, tank truck which is designed to carry liquefied loads, dry bulk cargo or gases on the road, dump truck which is a truck that was designed for movable materials such as sand, dirt or rocks for construction [Falco, 2011]. A dump truck is usually equipped with an open-box at the back and the front part of the box is able to be lift up in order to move the material inside the box to the ground. There are several types of dump trucks such as standard dump trucks, transfer dumb trucks, truck and pup, super dumb trucks, semi-trailer end dumb truck, semi-trailer bottom dumb truck, double and triple bottom dumb truck and side dumb truck. The maximum capacity for the heavy trucks is up to 40 tons. Besides this three categories, there are 2 types of trucks which is out of category.

First is the ballast tractor, it is designed to push or pull heavy or exceptionally large items and it is the heaviest class of on-highway trucks. Second is the heavy hauler, it consists of flatbed with multiple wheels which can carry up to 400 tons. All variety of trucks above will have more assortment of trucks with different size and design. 2.2 Current competitors Local competitor S.T.B Maju (M) Sdn Bhd was first founded in 1973 which operated as supplying labourers and machinery. It was operated by using forklifts for bulk cargo handling services at Port Klang. Today, S.T.B Maju (M) Sdn Bhd is only focusing more on transportation of raw materials in bulk for construction and other types of raw materials for production. For example, palm kernel products, soya bean meal, maize, coal, coke breeze, woodchips, sand and so on. S.T.B Maju (M) Sdn Bhd has their business at all the major port in Malaysia such as the Penang Port, Lumut Port, North Port and Kuantan Port.

This company has provided services to several industries included the palm oil industry, feed mill industry, cement industry, iron or manganese ore industry and so on. They provide services such as warehousing, transportation, bulk cargo handling, stevedoring and supply of heavy machinery at several ports and factories. S.T.B Maju (M) Sdn Bhd declared that they are rich in engineering skills and have wide experiences that allow them to use special capabilities in every project delivering and they are confident in adding value to their customers at every stage of their operation process. With their own experience and technical skills, they have created a 7’ feet belt width hopper conveyor which is the only conveyor used to load by tipping trailer among the ports in West Malaysia.

This had created a competitive advantage for the company if any of their customers require this type of conveyor since there is none of the other company possesses this type of conveyor. Besides that, they have also successfully come out with a wide selection of mobile conveyor and fleets of tipper lorries that equipped with the Global Positioning System (GPS) to allow goods tracking services during delivery. This is able to improve the security of the goods for the customers. The goods tracking services by using GPS is still not very common in Malaysia, even Tiong Nam Group is still have not develop this type of services so it had brought a large competitive advantages for S.T.B Maju company.

Besides that, the transportation service provided is covering a not small range of products is giving the company some benefit since Tiong Nam Group does not involve in transporting sand, cement, rock and so on. International competitor Crane Worldwide Logistics (M) Sdn Bhd was first founded in 2007 that the first company was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In the past 2 years, their company has expended and had added average one network partner to their system for each year. Crane Worldwide Logistic is not only covered land freight but also covered air and ocean freight for the Pacific Rim through their network in worldwide. The company has established the joint venture offices with more than 200 people all over the Far east, U.S, Central and South America, Europe and Australia at the end of 2009.The services provided by this company included custom clearance which is about tax, freight forwarding with marine insurance, domestic trucking, local delivery, logistic consulting and warehousing. Crane Worldwide Logistic company transported almost all kinds of goods. They have also involved hand carries services or counter to counter services for emergency shipments.

Crane Worldwide Logistic company’s goal is to expand their business and company across the nations and they have seem to achieve their goal since they already have their business across several nations and has good relationship with most carriers serving the Pacific. The company has also provided several value added strategies such as supplier management program, benchmark productivity improvement, standardize performance criteria, evaluate quality service with commitment and so on. The process that the company is implementing now included the local facilities meeting, dedicated team assigned, IT testing, functional organization set-up, trial shipment testing and so on. The competitive advantages of Crane Worldwide Logistic are based on service quality, reliability, capability and competitive pricing offer. They have the confidence that they are able to provide a higher quality of services and they have the skills and abilities to ensure the service they provide will satisfy the customers. Besides that, most of their employees are bilingual in Chinese and English and they had upgraded all their hardware, technologies and IT system recently in order to provide the best services for their customers. By comparing to Tiong Nam Group, Tiong Nam will be less competitive advantage based on the technology part and it only focus more on land transport so it can be difficult if Tiong Nam Group want to expand across nations compare to Crane Worldwide Logistic company.

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