Supply Chain Issues in a Changing World

This guide provides a clear plan for Australian business owners to diagnose the hidden costs in their delivery fleet and build a resilient, future-proof logistics operation.

Walter Scremin CEO at Ontime

12 October 2025

Are your delivery costs spiralling, your best drivers being poached, and customers getting frustrated with delays? If you’re here after another late shipment, I understand. I’m Walter Scremin, CEO of Ontime Delivery Solutions, and for more thanr two decades, I’ve seen Australian business owners face the exact same chaos.

That chaos isn’t just “supply chain issues.” It’s a symptom of a deeper problem: you’re unintentionally running a second, incredibly demanding transport company alongside your primary one. This guide is a diagnostic tool to help you reclaim your focus and provides a clear framework to identify the real costs of your in-house fleet.

Here’s your quick roadmap to taking back control:

The Interconnected Crisis: How Global Chaos Hits Your Business
The Strategic Trap: Why Fixing Your Fleet is a Losing Battle
The Solution Framework: A 4-Step Plan to Regain Control
Conclusion: How to Regain Your Focus and Steer Your Business

Let’s get you back to growing your business, not just managing a transport company on the side.

Why Global Chaos Makes Your Local Deliveries Unreliable

To fix the problems inside your business, you must first understand they are symptoms of larger forces outside it. The old model of manual route planning and minimal backup vehicles has been broken by a perfect storm of global and local pressures.

Whether you run a single van or a dozen trucks, your delivery department is at the epicentre of this storm. These are the key challenges affecting Australian businesses and what they mean for your bottom line.

The Challenge	The Direct Impact on Your Business (The “So What?”)	The Hard Numbers
Rising Costs	Unpredictable spikes in fuel, insurance, and maintenance directly erode your profit margins. This makes every single delivery less profitable and threatens the financial viability of your entire operation.	Commercial vehicle insurance premiums have risen 5–10% this year alone.
Driver Shortage	Difficulty finding and retaining reliable drivers leads to delayed orders and service disruptions. This directly damages your brand’s reputation and risks losing loyal customers to competitors.	Australia faced a shortfall of nearly 28,000 heavy vehicle drivers in 2024.
Extreme Weather	A single flood or bushfire can sever key routes, shutting down your delivery capacity for days. This causes massive customer frustration and can jeopardise your most important contracts.	The World Economic Forum ranks extreme weather as the #2 most likely global risk.

The Strategic Trap: Why Fixing Your Fleet is a Losing Battle

These external pressures force you into a role you were never meant to play: the full-time manager of a small, inefficient transport company. This is the Strategic Trap. It’s the mistaken belief that you can solve these complex logistics challenges yourself while also trying to be an expert in your own industry.

“The moment you bought your first few delivery vans, you stopped running one business. You started running two: your core business, and a small transport company. The transport company is the one losing you money and focus.”

— Walter Scremin, CEO of Ontime Delivery Solutions

The Unspoken Reality of Your ‘Second Job’

Let’s be brutally honest about what this second job entails. On any given day, you or your key staff are responsible for the emotional and financial toll of these tasks:
Spending hours vetting medium rigid licenced drivers and checking demerit points, only to watch them leave for a mining job six months later.
Taking a 9 PM call that your refrigerated Transit’s chiller has failed, putting a pallet of perishable goods at risk.
Disputing an invoice for a diesel particulate filter replacement on a Hino truck that’s barely out of warranty.
Losing sleep over Chain of Responsibility compliance, knowing that for the most severe offences, corporate penalties can reach up to $3,000,000.
Manually planning complex multi-drop routes for auto-parts deliveries each morning, a task that becomes exponentially harder as you grow.

Every minute spent on these issues is a minute stolen from your core business priorities.

A Quick Diagnostic: Do You Own a Fleet or a Distraction?

Take a moment for a frank self-assessment. Does this second job align with your company’s strategic goals? Ask yourself:

Where is my team’s time really going? How many hours did my manager spend with the mechanic for the Isuzu instead of with our top client last week?
What is my real priority during a crisis? When a key client’s time-sensitive delivery is late, is my first instinct to solve their problem or to fix my internal logistics mess?
Is this my passion? Am I genuinely passionate about optimising fuel consumption, or do I see fleet management as a necessary evil?

Your answers will tell you whether you’re managing a fleet or you’re caught in the Strategic Trap.

Why Your Success Makes the Trap Even Deeper

Here’s the paradox: the more successful your core business becomes, the deeper you fall into the trap. Landing a huge new distribution contract should be a celebration, not the trigger for logistical panic.

But if you are misaligned, each new contract simply increases your exposure to driver shortages and maintenance costs. This turns growth into a source of stress, not success.

Tired of fleet problems?

The true cost isn’t just fuel—it’s lost time. Book a no-obligation chat to diagnose your hidden costs.

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The Solution Framework: A 4-Step Plan to Regain Control

If that diagnostic felt uncomfortably familiar, the solution isn’t to work harder at your second job. It’s to strategically dismantle it.

From my experience, successful businesses escape the trap by following this clear, four-step plan. This is a model for reclaiming your focus by directly addressing the frustrations you just identified.

Step 1: Audit Your Risk to Build Resilience

Your first priority is to de-risk your operations. Ask, “If this van broke down right now, what is my immediate plan to get today’s deliveries done?”

If the answer is “I don’t know,” you’ve found your biggest vulnerability. A resilient operation has guaranteed backups for both vehicles and drivers, ensuring your priority remains the customer because the logistics are already covered.

Step 2: Document Your Brand’s Delivery Standards

Next, transform your deliveries from a simple function into a brand asset. Start by documenting your top three non-negotiable customer delivery protocols.

Is it a specific greeting or a certain process for handling goods? This document becomes the foundation for training any driver to represent your company professionally, turning every drop-off into an experience that reinforces your brand’s quality.

Step 3: Assess Your Fleet’s Limitations to Unlock Growth

A smart delivery model provides flexibility. Ask yourself, “Which deliveries are we struggling with, or even turning down, because we don’t have the right vehicle?”

Your answer reveals where your fleet is constraining your growth. The goal is to have access to any commercial vehicle you need, allowing your delivery capacity to scale with your opportunities, not limit them.

Step 4: Calculate Your “Focus Cost” to Reclaim Your Time

Finally, reclaim your most valuable asset: focus. For one week, track every minute you or your key managers spend on non-core logistics tasks like maintenance, recruitment, and compliance.

That total is your ‘focus cost’. By handing these administrative burdens to a specialist, you eliminate this cost, which industry benchmarks show can reduce fuel and maintenance expenses by 10-20% and, more importantly, free up your team to grow the business.

“The real cost of running your own fleet isn’t on an invoice. It’s the 10-15 hours your team spends on logistics every week instead of on sales, innovation, and customer service. That’s the hidden cost to your growth.”

— Walter Scremin, CEO of Ontime Delivery Solutions

Conclusion: How to Regain Your Focus and Steer Your Business

The world will remain unpredictable, but your deliveries don’t have to be. Escaping the Strategic Trap is about reclaiming your focus to steer your business, not just manage trucks.

For many owners, diverting 10-15 hours each week from sales and strategy to putting out fleet fires is the most significant hidden cost to their growth.

Your Next Step: Get a Transparent Fleet XRAY Analysis™

As a first step, a simple cost analysis provides immediate clarity. Whether you do it yourself or use a specialised tool, understanding the numbers is key. Our Fleet XRAY Analysis™ is a complimentary process designed to give you that clarity, not a sales pitch.

It’s a 15-minute call where our specialists walk you through a simple cost-auditing framework. All we need are a few top-line figures you likely know off-hand:

Your current number and type of vehicles.
Your approximate weekly fuel spend.
Your estimated annual maintenance and insurance costs.

Using this data, we provide a clear, one-page report benchmarking your expenses against our optimised partnership model. It’s a precise, data-backed figure that shows your potential savings. Call our team on 1300 778 919 to schedule your free chat.