What are you doing at 5am?
Chances are not running a double road train over to Copper Refineries at Stuart to pick up another load of copper cathode for export.
The morning twilight is the realm of the copper drivers.
They’re among the first at work on the NSS lease and the sound of those Mercedes diesels are ubiquitous to the point they’re now part of the brand.
While it seems like they’ve been there for ever, the drivers came over from Toll only 12 months ago when it surrendered the CRL business.
NSS Logistics Manager David Vass said the pair set a high standard which was presented so consistently it deserved to be highlighted.
“They run the copper each day but we really ramped up the copper the last few weeks. Those guys do some big hours and they don’t complain. They’re here at five o’clock every morning, doing their job.
“They just probably go a bit under the radar. They sort of run the copper job themselves, communicate with terminal team leader and our guys and they just do a good job.
“They load themselves, so they drive the forklift, load their own truck, come here, we unload the trucks here, load the containers … if it’s break bulk put on the wharf and then they go back to load themselves.”
The road trains average around 20 minutes fully loaded from CRL to the NSS lease at Port of Townsville. A good time for a round trip is just over an hour.