Speaker 1: I think it's so fair to say I've had a
Speaker 1: fascination as I know many of you have right around
Speaker 1: Australia with business, with various businesses. Well, by the way,
Speaker 1: we'll come back to calls too in just a moment.
Speaker 1: Those of you that are waiting, I promise you we'll
Speaker 1: get you in just a tick. For a long time
Speaker 1: I had a fascination with businesses, and particularly family businesses,
Speaker 1: and the love of family business started for me as
Speaker 1: not only is an idea, but the idea of what
Speaker 1: a business inside the family that the family runs and
Speaker 1: gets underway, and then the fantastic heritage that often occurs
Speaker 1: out of family businesses. The one that jumps to mind
Speaker 1: for me because he was a friend and mentor, the
Speaker 1: great David Haymes from Hames Paint based here in Victoria
Speaker 1: of course, or at Ballarat, wonderful family business. The kids
Speaker 1: run it now and it brings great joy to thousands
Speaker 1: of people that engage in work with that particular business.
Speaker 1: And now that one might be Cooper's Brewery in South Australia.
Speaker 1: That gives you the idea of scale. Really Now the
Speaker 1: consequence of that is to work pretty closely with having
Speaker 1: them on the radio to talk about some of the
Speaker 1: history behind these family businesses. One, in fact, as I
Speaker 1: was doing some research, is a business called Cold Express.
Speaker 1: Two words called X the letter X. If you're looking
Speaker 1: for a word that starts with X express, thank you.
Speaker 1: They do remarkable things. Third party service, which takes the
Speaker 1: hassle out of perishable goods transportation on the line is
Speaker 1: the one and only Jack Dolosa. Jack is the chief
Speaker 1: operating officer.
Speaker 2: Jack.
Speaker 3: Good morning. It's a great story.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 1: I mean here we are based in Listerfield right here
Speaker 1: in Victoria, and you are the director of operations.
Speaker 3: What do we know about it? What do we need
Speaker 3: to know about it?
Speaker 2: Jack? In terms of how it first started, So.
Speaker 4: I've I've got my dad next week, Tony on. I
Speaker 4: thought I'd bring the big dog on and then far away.
Speaker 3: Bring the big dog on, John, big dog, good morning.
Speaker 3: Are you fantastic? And thank you for being here?
Speaker 2: John.
Speaker 3: So presumably you.
Speaker 1: Were ultimately responsible, as a youngster of creating this amazing,
Speaker 1: what is now a wonderful business.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's correct. I started it in ninety eight with
Speaker 5: my uncle at the time and my wife doing some admin. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and we went from there.
Speaker 2: What was the opportunity. Jack, What were you doing up
Speaker 2: until that time?
Speaker 5: Well before that, I actually was born into business. My
Speaker 5: dad had a fruit shop and just going up, going
Speaker 5: to the market, getting up three thirty in the morning
Speaker 5: with him, I guess he instilled a good work ethic
Speaker 5: in me. And when he retired, I took it over
Speaker 5: his little shop, and I then extended it. I knocked
Speaker 5: it down, made it three times bigger, and eventually I
Speaker 5: sold that shop. It was in South Caulfield, and because
Speaker 5: I had the truck, I kept the truck. And then
Speaker 5: I remember the first first week I was home, my
Speaker 5: wife said to me, what are you doing. You've been
Speaker 5: home for three days. I said that, yeah, but I've worked,
Speaker 5: you know, seven days a week for the last twenty years.
Speaker 5: I have can I have three days? And she came
Speaker 5: to with an ad newspaper people looking for, you know,
Speaker 5: truck truck drop trucks, truck drivers with trucks. So I
Speaker 5: answered the ad. I said to her, I'm just going
Speaker 5: to go and get this job, just thinking, well, of
Speaker 5: course I'm going to get it. So I went there
Speaker 5: and you know, they hired me. I had the biggest
Speaker 5: truck in the fleet at that time. It was a
Speaker 5: twelve ton truck. And then I branched out and started
Speaker 5: doing it on my own. And a friend of mine,
Speaker 5: who are known from the market, said to me, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm supply. I've got a contract to supply coals with
Speaker 5: fruit packs. You know. You know, can you do my
Speaker 5: deliveries for me? And I said, well, yeah, I can,
Speaker 5: but what's involved? And he said it's got to be refrigerated.
Speaker 5: And I said, look, I know nothing about it. Anyway,
Speaker 5: a few months went by and he came back to
Speaker 5: me and said, Johnny goes, I'm just you know, no
Speaker 5: one can do this thing properly. You know, there's four
Speaker 5: of us, we're all in the same boat. And he said,
Speaker 5: you know, I've got routes planned. He goes, just just
Speaker 5: take over because it's taken me away from my core business.
Speaker 5: And I said. I was just talking to my auntie
Speaker 5: one day and I said, look, I'm going to start
Speaker 5: doing this and she said, well, why don't you get
Speaker 5: your uncle to do the admin and you do the
Speaker 5: operational side. So that's how I started. I started with
Speaker 5: one truck. I started. I actually started working out of
Speaker 5: his fridge, out of a twenty foot container.
Speaker 2: Started twenty foot container. How many trucks now are.
Speaker 5: Job now we've got around one hundred and forty trucks.
Speaker 3: Wow, one hundred and forty trucks.
Speaker 1: Do you know what the beauty of what you just
Speaker 1: said in that lovely background is the role your father
Speaker 1: played in this pretty humble beginnings.
Speaker 5: I would have thought, oh yeah, yeah, you know, you
Speaker 5: know when my dad when he was doing deliveries, like
Speaker 5: they were doing home deliveries, he would, you know, to
Speaker 5: the local people that would come in, he would walk
Speaker 5: the box on his shoulders. Yeah, home deliveries because he
Speaker 5: didn't want to spend the petrol in the truck, in
Speaker 5: the in the van. Yeah, that's that generation. That's what
Speaker 5: they would do. Everything was about saving, saving, saving, because
Speaker 5: they knew what it was like. You know. They they
Speaker 5: grew up in just post war, so yeah, they did
Speaker 5: it tough and there they were.
Speaker 4: The real heroes.
Speaker 2: They were the real heroes.
Speaker 1: And there are ziggons of those stories right across Australia.
Speaker 3: So john father came.
Speaker 5: From where my dad came from, Strombly in Italy. He
Speaker 5: came over with his suitcase, owing his passage to someone
Speaker 5: who brought him over and he went to work for
Speaker 5: them in a fruit shop for I think it was
Speaker 5: about thirty or forty cents a week.
Speaker 1: Back then, thirty or forty cents a week, just post
Speaker 1: war in Melbourne of course.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I think he started off in Hawthorne and
Speaker 5: he worked seven days a week, never had a day off.
Speaker 5: And then he met my mum and he asked just
Speaker 5: for a couple of hours off so we'd go, you know,
Speaker 5: get her an engagement ring, you know, and he was
Speaker 5: told no, you know, you can't have any time off.
Speaker 5: So Dad said, look, you know, I've more than paid
Speaker 5: my passage back to you. Now I'm leaving. And he
Speaker 5: left and he got his own little shop and that's
Speaker 5: how he started.
Speaker 2: That is fantastic.
Speaker 1: You talk about those markets in those days, John, presumably
Speaker 1: you're talking Footscray.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, yes, yes, Well Dad started off in the
Speaker 5: it was Victoria Market originally and then they moved over
Speaker 5: to Footscray and.
Speaker 1: Those runs that you were doing in those days, getting
Speaker 1: up at two three o'clock in the morning and do
Speaker 1: those runs, I mean there was little or no traffic.
Speaker 1: You would have presumably gone out somewhere near Dining Road.
Speaker 5: Yep, yeah, that's it. It was right next to Dining Road,
Speaker 5: the you know, the fruit market was there. I'd go
Speaker 5: in with Dad.
Speaker 4: We'd go and buy.
Speaker 5: All the fruit and everything. I'd help him load up
Speaker 5: his truck and we'd go back to the shop. We'd
Speaker 5: get back about six thirty seven o'clock, you know, we'd
Speaker 5: unload the truck, you know, or you know, and you
Speaker 5: know in school wholidays there, you know, i'd go and
Speaker 5: help him. But yeah, it was you know, the worst
Speaker 5: thing was I still remember.
Speaker 4: The cold morning.
Speaker 5: Yes, you know, your hands are freezing. And back then
Speaker 5: they'd get colie flowers or cabbages and the guy would
Speaker 5: stand on the back of his truck and he'd throw
Speaker 5: them to you, you know, and every time you caught one,
Speaker 5: you'd feel like your fingers were about to snap off,
Speaker 5: you know, because they were just full of water and ice.
Speaker 1: In the depths of a cold Melbourne winter would have
Speaker 1: been chilli. He came, now, Johnny, I'm going to we'll
Speaker 1: do this break and I want to come back and
Speaker 1: talk to Jack. A young Jack would have been a
Speaker 1: little kid as he got any talent.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, look, yes.
Speaker 1: Well let me determine that and we'll do that straight
Speaker 1: after this We've got John Delosa, We've got Jack Delosa.
Speaker 1: We're talking about this great straighted family business from Family
Speaker 1: Business Association, and we'll have more the other side of this.
Speaker 1: Your calls as well, come and join us. You might
Speaker 1: be somebody who's been out to those markets over the years,
Speaker 1: foot screen markets, lots of memories there. I would have
Speaker 1: thought markets right around Australia one double three, six nine three,
Speaker 1: as you know, as I mentioned earlier, have this fascination
Speaker 1: family business right across Australia. Great Family Business Association. We've
Speaker 1: been talking to John Deloser, the CEO and founder if
Speaker 1: you like, of Cold Express. Chief operation operating officer is
Speaker 1: Jack Young, Jack the loser.
Speaker 2: No pressure there, Jack.
Speaker 1: So I guess in a sense you'd be when you
Speaker 1: hear those stories, and no doubt you've heard them before
Speaker 1: from Dad John and those very early humble beginnings of grandfather.
Speaker 1: Do they resonate with you in your day to day
Speaker 1: activities now as a leader inside this great business.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean the value that you know Non Lord
Speaker 6: put through Dad, these Dad's put that through us. Kind
Speaker 6: someone of four siblings and three of us work in
Speaker 6: the business and it plays a huge impact on how
Speaker 6: we carry our business and our culture that we built
Speaker 6: in our family business. If you look at like you
Speaker 6: know now that when people come to see us for
Speaker 6: meetings at our head office, we have literally as you
Speaker 6: walk into our meeting room, we've decked out well I
Speaker 6: like to call the root room, which is basically, you know,
Speaker 6: all all the memorabilia, like the roots, the roots of
Speaker 6: the business.
Speaker 5: Okay, different generations things make different things they do.
Speaker 4: So that's that's that's where that's where everything starts from
Speaker 4: from us. So that's it's in our business and run
Speaker 4: our business.
Speaker 2: All of a sudden, many of us want to come
Speaker 2: around and visitor.
Speaker 3: What I'm saying, I gotta I gotta think that.
Speaker 1: The the heritage of the You say, the siblings, and
Speaker 1: I guess do you look to the next gen or
Speaker 1: is it too early to the next gen?
Speaker 3: Do the kids come in as you.
Speaker 2: Did Jack when you were little.
Speaker 1: Do the little tackers now coming grandchildren John presumably, and
Speaker 1: just have a look around.
Speaker 2: What's grandpa doing, what's dad Jack doing?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Well Jack's got three three girls.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I've got three girls under three, three, under three, three,
Speaker 6: two and six months.
Speaker 4: So that's that's They're a long time away. From that,
Speaker 4: but they do like jumping in the little Mercedes benz By.
Speaker 5: Cars and driving them around at shows and things. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so they're the sale of the century girls on those vehicles.
Speaker 1: I guess the sale of the century girls on the
Speaker 1: That's very funny. So to either you John and or
Speaker 1: Jack the challenges in the current climate, what do they
Speaker 1: look like?
Speaker 2: How do they show up for you?
Speaker 3: Because this is not this is because you've been doing well.
Speaker 1: This doesn't guarantee the next five, ten, fifteen years can
Speaker 1: instantly be really come to it's a working great question.
Speaker 5: Great question because you know, this year we've seen a
Speaker 5: number of really good transport companies, companies in our industry. Family, yeah, family.
Speaker 4: That have been around for fifty odd years.
Speaker 5: Well Don Watson's was around tiventy seven odd years, and
Speaker 5: they did it right, you know. They they treated their
Speaker 5: staff right, they everything was done right. It's just it's
Speaker 5: almost like it's a race to the bottom. People undercutting
Speaker 5: it's it's it's hard, especially with all the new taxes
Speaker 5: and you know, land tacks. You know, I could spend
Speaker 5: half an hour talking.
Speaker 2: About it's a killer.
Speaker 5: It is. We've gone from a few years back on
Speaker 5: one of the sites eighty three thousand dollars for the
Speaker 5: year to I just got it a few months back,
Speaker 5: four hundred and two thousand.
Speaker 2: Well that's just bulltish yep.
Speaker 5: Yep, And that's you know, how does a family you
Speaker 5: know pay those things? I mean, we have to pass
Speaker 5: the class on and then people wonder why their groceries
Speaker 5: are getting expensive. You know, the government should be looking
Speaker 5: after businesses because if they give us tax concess, get
Speaker 5: rid of payroll tax, which is another story, get rid
Speaker 5: of that. Let us you know, if we had more money,
Speaker 5: we would actually what the businesses do. Family businesses, They
Speaker 5: reinvest in their own business. They put back into the community.
Speaker 5: And that's what some people just don't understand. The answer
Speaker 5: is not tax the businesses. You know, com people think.
Speaker 4: Oh, you've got a business, you're you know, you're raking it.
Speaker 5: You know, you're making so much money you don't know
Speaker 5: what to do with it. So many businesses that I
Speaker 5: know the principles don't even take wages.
Speaker 2: They don't.
Speaker 1: And my great friend and mentor I mentioned earlier was
Speaker 1: David Hames. I think you would probably know the Hames
Speaker 1: family from Family Business Association. One of the things David
Speaker 1: would say, you've got one hundred and forty trucks, one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty families just in that sector of your business,
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty plus families that rely on you
Speaker 1: to continue in business.
Speaker 2: Yep. Correct.
Speaker 5: And then there's fifty odd stormen yep. And then there's
Speaker 5: all the office staff and yeah, yeah, about to fifty yeah, two.
Speaker 1: One hundred and fifty different families who have still got
Speaker 1: to pay operating and working with you very closely, presumably
Speaker 1: proud to do so.
Speaker 2: And they got to pay school fees.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and put food on the table.
Speaker 3: And put food on the table. It's a lovely story.
Speaker 1: I wish we had a bit more time, except to
Speaker 1: say the challenges for the future.
Speaker 3: Could you see a clearing? Is it about? Is it
Speaker 3: about having?
Speaker 1: One of the reasons we do this is to give
Speaker 1: people a sense of what the power that family business
Speaker 1: in Australia has.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Look, look I've got my ways of doing things a
Speaker 5: little bit old fashioned. Probably Jack's got his way of
Speaker 5: doing things, which I don't always agree. I mean, he
Speaker 5: came to me a number of months back he said,
Speaker 5: our dad, you know, I want to do a podcast.
Speaker 5: And I laughed at him and he goes, do you
Speaker 5: want to do it with me and you Alex, you
Speaker 5: know the other the other boy that's in the family,
Speaker 5: that's in the business. And I said, no, no, you
Speaker 5: guys go ahead and do it. And you go, Dad,
Speaker 5: why wouldn't you want to do something with your two sons,
Speaker 5: you know, the old guilt trip, the old Italian guilt trip.
Speaker 5: And I said, yeah, okay, we'll do it. And yeah,
Speaker 5: I've got to say I'm actually enjoying it. Where you know,
Speaker 5: we just talk about businesses. It's it's called the c
Speaker 5: X Show.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's all about put showing a lot of family
Speaker 6: businesses that don't get the spot while they deserve.
Speaker 4: They do great in their communities.
Speaker 5: It's not about the big guys. We like to focus
Speaker 5: on the smaller, the smaller to medium sized businesses that
Speaker 5: always get overlooked. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think in this danage, you have to be folks.
Speaker 6: We have to be doing things differently, and you know
Speaker 6: where that's a lot through tech innovation as.
Speaker 4: Well as you know, marketing.
Speaker 6: I think you really need to be out there doing
Speaker 6: that sort of stuff today's days.
Speaker 1: John as founder CEO and then working with Jack, Alex
Speaker 1: and the rest of the family, do you, at some
Speaker 1: point in your own mind say, at what point do
Speaker 1: I let go? That is a challenge of family business
Speaker 1: across Australia.
Speaker 5: You know, Conny, you know I'm laughing because I said
Speaker 5: that two years ago. I said, you know, I'm going
Speaker 5: to step back. You guys are going to you know, takeover.
Speaker 5: I'll come in maybe once every couple of weeks. And
Speaker 5: I started scaling back to three times a week. And
Speaker 5: then I went overseas with my wife. And while I'm overseas,
Speaker 5: Jack said to me, Dad, you know the block just
Speaker 5: on the other corners come up for sale. So we
Speaker 5: ended up buying that other block because we'd run out
Speaker 5: of room where we are and come back and now
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, I'm seven days a week again,
Speaker 5: so getting that off the ground. But that's it's up
Speaker 5: and running now. So yeah, I guess from a forty
Speaker 5: foot container, we've got just under fifty thousand square meters
Speaker 5: now across the two sites in Roval. We're in Robal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you are in Roval, which is the area to
Speaker 1: be for that is sort of a business. I can't
Speaker 1: thank you enough for both staying up nice and late
Speaker 1: and do this and we wish you well in the future.
Speaker 1: You and I have not met, but I hope we
Speaker 1: do at some point.
Speaker 5: John and Jack, Yeah, I'm sure we will.
Speaker 1: We will wish you well with the success of the business,
Speaker 1: a continued success. It doesn't come easy, as the old
Speaker 1: song goes, but it's a brand that is very, very important.
Speaker 1: Cold Express just what I've been talking of a text.
Speaker 1: How important are the drivers to you? And have we
Speaker 1: got enough drivers? And what are the challenges around drivers
Speaker 1: as we need them to love them today?
Speaker 5: Yeah, look, it's you ask any person in business, the
Speaker 5: biggest challenge is getting good staff. Prior to COVID, You
Speaker 5: know that they were really all the stuff we had terrific.
Speaker 5: Then COVID hit and we could not get people to work.
Speaker 5: A lot of them had to go back overseas because
Speaker 5: you know, we have a lot of people from overseas
Speaker 5: working and all of a sudden there's a shortage, and
Speaker 5: the ones that remain were basically well, no, you know,
Speaker 5: you tell ask them to do something, and so no,
Speaker 5: we don't want to do that, and we couldn't move
Speaker 5: them on because we needed them. And that still of
Speaker 5: like took a good two to three years to get
Speaker 5: on top.
Speaker 4: Of its definitely gotten better now, but as data saying,
Speaker 4: the quality is and is there before that, But that's
Speaker 4: something that we're we're working on and we have a pretty.
Speaker 5: Good The quality where you've got now is good because
Speaker 5: they might be listening, they.
Speaker 1: Will be on night shift and what are they talking about.
Speaker 1: I'll let you both go great to talk them. We'll
Speaker 1: do it and catch up at some point down the track.
Speaker 1: I hope that's John Delosa and Jack Delosa. What a
Speaker 1: This is a family a business associated It's called Cold
Speaker 1: Express Family Business Association.