The Craig Roseneder Award has been one of the most highly-sought after awards in the Australian heavy vehicle industry since 1998. The Australian Trucking Association is set to once again include the professional trip of a lifetime as part of the recognition which, this year, is an opportunity to attend the United States Technology and Maintenance Council Annual Meeting which, next year, will be held in Nashville, Tennessee.
The expenses-paid trip represents the opportunity of a lifetime for Australia’s best and brightest technical and maintenance professional to rub shoulders with some of America’s largest fleet managers to pick-up invaluable, money-can’t-buy knowledge to bring back to their businesses and the wider local sector.
The award is part of the Australian Trucking Association’s National Trucking Awards and is open to any individual who works full-time in the Australian trucking industry for a trucking company, supplier, or commercial workshop as a workshop manager, mechanic or provides support within the maintenance field for heavy vehicles.
After coming a close second in 2018, Dennis Roohan was successfully named the award-winner in 2020 and, after a Covid-enforced delay, attended the 2023 US TMC.
Roohan, who now holds the post of Chair of the ATA’s Industry and Technical Council, reminisced about his experiences Stateside with ATN, and says learning about the the sheer scale of some of the American operations had application opportunities back home.
“They’d ask me where I was from, I’d say Newcastle, Australia – and then they’d ask me where Australia was,” Roohan tells ATN.
“Then I’d ask how many trucks they had in their fleet, and they’d say 20 or 30 thousand. I met a couple of guys there who had 60 or 70 thousand trucks in their fleet. The sheer size of it is mind-boggling.
“The first day you’re there you’ll have 100 meetings to go through their recognised maintenance practices and you just have to pick which ones you want to go to because their practices are so documented, and their manual is brilliant.
“Then they have what they called study groups where people go over practices, review them and try to improve them. I was invited to go on whichever ones I wanted to, and I’m still a member of some of those study groups now a couple of years later.
“Because they’re bigger over there, but here in good old Australia we do a lot of things better. They’re massive on preventative maintenance, just because of the sheer number of trucks they’re working with on a daily basis, they’re very, very efficient in that regard.
“You can ask anyone at the TMC any question, there are no secrets and they’re happy to share anything you ask them.”
It’s not just the size of the fleets operated by some of the attendees that are jaw-dropping. It’s the size of the event itself.
“There were 700 fleets alone with over 5000 delegates the year I went,” Roohan continues.
“They have an exhibition space similar to our TMC, but their exhibition space is probably half to three quarters of the size of an entire Brisbane Truck Show.
“The TMC is about the people you meet, and you can’t put a price on it. You can’t just go out onto the street and meet the kinds of people who are running fleets like that.”
For all the glitz and glamour associated with winning one of the ATA’s most prestigious awards, there is no forgetting the man it’s been named after since its inception, Craig Roseneder.
“Craig was devoted to the development of a safer road transport industry,” Roohan says.
“The award is named in his honour because of the passion, excellence and experience he had to create a unique approach to resolving challenges which confronted the industry.
“There are some very, very, very smart people who have won this award when you look back at the honour roll. Some that I certainly learned a lot from in my early days in this industry.
“I think the lion’s share of people who have won this award are still in the industry and living it day-to-day, and I’m sure using the knowledge they gained from the conference in their everyday business.”
Nominate someone for this year’s Craig Roseneder Award here.
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