‘Tis the season

Scully RSV has come a long way from its humble beginnings. Founded as a family business in 1993, the company worked aggressively to respond to the great demand in the market of cold chain logistics, looking to break through a plethora of barriers to provide an essential service to customers around Australia.

Over time, Scully RSV’s service offering and constant ambition grew the business into a bigger and better operation, expanding its presence with large distribution and manufacturing facilities across states and boasting a fleet of over 1,000 refrigerated transport vehicles for hire.

Two thousand twenty-four proved to be yet another year of critical success for Scully RSV, setting the scene for major growth while proving its operational capacity. The Christmas holiday period, according to Scully RSV National Sales and Business Development Manager, Glenn Smith, was the year’s peak for logistical demand and saw the company service a massive undertaking.

“We service some of the nation’s largest logistics providers, particularly during the Christmas peak season,” he says. “During this time, the volume being moved in the industry significantly increases.

“These logistics customers come to us for a solution to give them the equipment they need so that they can move highly demanded products. We play an integral role in enabling these deliveries of refrigerated goods that people want over Christmas time.”

Scully RSV’s refrigerated truck fleet mainly carries fresh produce such as meat and poultry, seafood, certain fruits and vegetables and a variety of dairy products. And although these products are always in demand, they experience a particular spike over the holidays.

While this increase in demand for logistical services and deliveries could prove overwhelming to some, Scully RSV has worked meticulously to refine and prepare its service offering while rapidly growing as a company. Combining its operational capabilities and past experiences, the business has developed an ironclad process of rolling out its fleet to ensure the smooth navigation of the holiday season’s logistical frenzy.

Glenn believes this diligent planning and invaluable experience sets Scully RSV apart and acts as a vital ingredient to its successful Christmas period – with last year’s one being the busiest ever.

“We undertake a number of processes in advance of peak periods like Christmas,” he says. “Our fleet team thoroughly checks that everything is in order because we know that all of our vehicles will go out to customers who need to be able to deliver the high volumes that come through.

“We’ve been doing this for a long time and the years of experience in our management team can be measured in the hundreds, so we know when the delivery volumes will increase. We get ahead of the curve and prepare ourselves so we can service demand efficiently and safely.”

Because of this extensive experience in dealing with periods of high logistical demand, Scully RSV is able to effectively anticipate the physical hotspots that the demand can be connected to. According to Glenn, areas with higher populations typically require a strong logistical presence as a greater concentration of people want more refrigerated goods.

In addition to this focus on metropolitan areas, Scully RSV is equally committed to servicing more regional areas of the country, many of which do not have as much infrastructure to hold refrigerated goods. As part of servicing these regional areas with cold chain logistics solutions, Scully RSV is also heavily involved in a range of community partnerships which focus on delivering the food and community services required.

Partnering with organisations like OzHarvest and Food Bank, to name a couple, Scully RSV provides assistance in supplying food and other goods to these communities. The company’s relationships with these initiatives are particularly strengthened over the Christmas period when a greater number of people in these communities tend to need food assistance.

Scully RSV’s commitment to community partnerships stems from its strong family values which have remained core principles that guide the company’s business operations and mission.

“We’re very keen on making sure we participate on the ground in the communities that we service,” Glenn says. “Having commenced as a family business and having carried those family values through to our management structure today, it is extremely important to us to employ local people and to engage with charities and community organisations in the places we operate. This is an essential investment that Scully RSV will continue to make.”

Coming off the intense period of sustained demand last Christmas, Scully RSV is looking to expand its outreach further across Australia. Last year saw the company open its newest branch in Adelaide, and the addition of another branch will be determined by where the demand can be found.

“We follow our customers where they take us,” Glenn says. “We built a customer base in Perth and quickly expanded our operations to keep up with the growth, and the same thing happened in Melbourne and Sydney in Scully RSV’s early days. Now our customers have most recently taken us to Adelaide, so we put a branch there to support that.

“We go where the demand is, and we fill that gap by putting operations on the ground to service our customers right.”

The 2024 Christmas period required a large cold chain logistics provider that was up to the task of connecting customers with their desired refrigerated goods. As a powerhouse of the sector, Scully RSV naturally filled this role and provided a consolidated service for the transport industry, ensuring these essential goods got to the right people in time for the holidays.