Success in business takes plenty of hard work, a dash of luck and having the right tools for the job.

When Peter McCormack started Fork2U it was to support his construction company that had started building homes out of glue-together blocks. He became the Victorian distributor of the blocks and built more than 20 homes himself and assisted many others with their own.

Initially just servicing his own needs, he saw a niche in the market. Armed with plenty of mechanical experience and a willingness to put in the long hours, he set to work.

Peter saw that not all sites receiving deliveries of palletised goods had their own forklifts, so he resolved to take a forklift to his customers.

Today his 17-strong Scania Fork2U fleet, which can work around the clock, has expanded from his original Melbourne base to include Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

The Fork2U fleet of Scania 8x2 flattops each carry a Manitou telehandler that can load and offload pretty much anywhere, and this service offering is widely appreciated across a broad range of customers.

“Sometimes we can have a full load of 12 pallets on a truck with 12 different client’s goods on the back,” Peter says. “Our bread and butter is tiles and turf, but the load can be a mix of scaffolding, drainage pipes, engineering machinery, as well as building supplies such as cladding, bricks, pizza ovens, heavy furniture and anything and everything in between. The secret to success has been our service. Our customers know they can rely on us.

A Brisbane-based customer that Peter had been delivering for from their Melbourne warehouse asked him to come up to Queensland, because they were frustrated with the service they were receiving in the city. Since establishing an office in Brisbane in February and creating a visual presence through highly visual livery, the QLD business has been growing fast in a short time.

“Overall, the business has grown enormously and has diversified from our original base moving construction products,” Peter says. “This week we have two trucks relocating a lot of equipment for the fire department, we do work for the Australian government, we did some stuff out of the morgue the other day, quite a lot of unusual items these days. We took some generators the top of Mt. Oberon at Wilson's Promontory for Telstra a while ago. We’ve also delivered oversized fountains and statues as well. We even relocated 760 pallets of car parts from an old warehouse to a new one in 36 hours for a vehicle importing business recently,” he says.

Peter started out at Detroit Diesel, which led to his fire-fighting career and then some housebuilding before evolving the Fork2U business.

“Detroit had a training school for mechanics, and we trained a lot of fire brigade people because they used Allison automatics and Detroit Diesels back then,” he says. “I was involved in the training of fire brigade mechanics at Detroit Diesels, before joining the Fire Brigade workshop division.”

After a while he got to see the firefighting side of it, and was keen to transition across, but they didn’t want to lose him from the workshop. He ended up leaving the brigade and joining Porsche Cars Australia for a couple of years, after that he went on to join the brigade as a firefighter.

“I used to drive a big ladder truck built on a Magirus-Deutz, with a 100-ft ladder. All up I did 31 years in the fire department, but I started Fork2U after about 24 years in the firefighting job,” Peter says.

The firefighting experience has given Peter an inner calm to help multitask the many moving parts within the Fork2U business.

“This job is very demanding. There’s a lot of pressure to get things delivered at certain times or get in into certain places that are tricky to access with a truck or a Manitou,” he says.

“In Melbourne, we have an order to deliver 120 pallets of bricks to a house project in Sandringham. We have a set time to deliver to keep up with the number of bricklayers on site. It’s similar with turf, we deliver a lot of grass, for one job we delivered 88 pallets to a house on the Peninsula.

“Turf is a big part of our work. We get up to four semi-trailers of grass every morning into the yard that we have to divide up and dispatch. Between 4.00am and 6.00am there’s forklifts moving everywhere, it’s a hive of activity. With every truck leaving the yard filled to capacity, most truck are empty by 8.00am and reloading, normally with in 15 minutes and could be empty again in another 15 minutes or could be driving to a destination four hours away,” Peter says.

The company has two trucks that collect bulk loads from single suppliers. Drivers bring the palletised goods back to the yard and then load them the next morning onto other trucks with all the grass for delivery to various locations and sometimes delivering three different jobs to the same location. The efficiency of loading allows the business to move around 3000 pallets per week.

“We’d pick up 20 pallets from one supplier that could go to 20 different locations, so we bring them back here and put them across all the trucks. So, we’d have a truck departing the yard with 12 different products on the back, and after the last delivery it’ll go somewhere else to pick up another load, for example delivering tiles into Toorak then picking up from the brick works in Glen Iris and deliver down to Portsea, then pick up turf in Carrum Downs and make deliveries all the way back,” Peter says.

“The trucks can work around the clock because there are some locations you can only access at night. We can be in at the airport in Melbourne between 1.00am and 4.00am delivering things that can’t access the terminals during the day. Sometimes we go on the tarmac with a pilot car escort to deliver under the terminal. We deliver in the city as well, for example in Swanston Street in the middle of the night when the trams aren’t running.”

Having a truck with a Manitou on the back means that Peter is the first call when customers run into problems.

“We had a call from a customer who had an issue with a forklift at a big department store, but needed a truck unloaded urgently. I realised that we had a truck near them, so I got it redirected, unloaded their truck and invoiced them in under 1 hour from the first phone call. They were extremely grateful. We’ve pulled cars out of hedges and all sorts of weird things. We get calls because people know we’re reliable and willing to help,” Peter says.

“The other day in Queensland I saw a guy with a Troopie that had lost a wheel, so I stopped the truck and used the fork to lift his car up while he bolted on the spare wheel. He was pretty grateful. He said he thought he would be stuck there all day.”

While Peter says his customers are very important to him, it’s everyone he’d like to make happy. He is becoming very passionate about social mental health awareness. He says he has lost many friends and firefighting colleagues who have taken their own lives, and he has teamed up with TIACS (This Is A Conversation Starter) tradie work wear and he has 24/7 help line numbers on the back of all his curtainsider trucks along with a happy message.

“Our Scanias have been amazing for us. They are very comfortable and easy to drive, with good visibility. Our drivers spend all day loading and unloading at multiple drop and collection points, so it is really good to climb into the Scania and enjoy the relaxed driving experience between jobs or on the way home,” Peter says.

“Scania has been good for us, with a great working relationship with our Account Manager, Mat Staddon, and also the service guys at Scania Laverton. We have 17 Scanias on the fleet now, mainly 8x2 flat tops, but a couple of 8x2 curtainsiders for palletised goods that need protection from the weather, such as high-quality timber flooring product. The curtainsiders have given us an opportunity to do more brand promotion, but even the Fork2U livery on the flattop doors gets noticed. I get lots of folks calling me up saying they saw my truck, even though now, it’s one of more than a dozen.

“Scania has been great product for us. They never seem to break down. We started off with a mix of used trucks, but obviously with my experience in the fire brigade I knew Scania quite well. Once I had met Mat, and we bought our first truck from stock, he showed us the benefits of ordering custom-made specifications, with 440 hp engines initially but now we’re on 420 hp. They give great fuel economy, have more than enough power and with the twin steer we’re not overweight on the front axle,” Peter says.

“Honestly, the trucks have been fantastic, as is the service. Scania Laverton will service for us overnight so we’re not without the truck during the working day. Early on we didn’t have a spare truck, so this was super helpful. We’re also on the Scania maintenance plan, so we know exactly what the trucks will cost to service.

“Fuel efficiency has been great, as is the idle stop feature that helps reduce fuel wastage. We’ve also had the Scania driver trainer in to show the guys how look after the truck and drive more efficiently every time we receive a new truck. We tell the drivers not to sit with the truck running, and if they’re leaving with a cold engine, to drive slowly for the first few minutes to let it warm up on the road. As the fleet gets bigger the fuel savings get bigger too,” he says.

“The fuel economy has been amazing,” Peter says. “We do a Mildura run every five weeks. And with these new trucks, you can go up and back with one tank of fuel. It's pretty impressive.”

As with any small to medium-sized business, finding the right people is critical. Peter seems to have an eye for picking good folk, to drive the trucks or run the scheduling, and that’s why they stay with the business.

“I think that’s the secret to success, not having to do everything yourself,” Peter says. “I get to do the things that I like doing, and I have a professional to do the other stuff that needs to be done, but which otherwise gets pushed off. I think that’s what drives a lot of people down, the stuff they don’t like such as the compliance, or ordering, or scheduling, when they’d much rather be doing what they do best and, in my case, it is talking with nearly every new customer and driving the truck like an undercover boss!”

Scania Account Manager Mat Staddon says that Peter’s success has derived from hard work and a commitment to buy quality trucks to keep the business on the right track.

“Peter’s business depends on delivering reliably for his customers, and Scania has been able to meet that need along with exceptional operating economy for Fork2U.

“Thinking back to the first truck we supplied to Peter and how his business has developed, I feel proud that Scania and Fork2U have all grown and worked closely together and formed a very important symbiotic relationship.

“It is not often that we are involved with a business from the start and it has been amazing to chart the success of Fork2U and to be able to supply them with tailored solutions as their needs evolved,” Mat says.

“As the fleet grew, Peter was conscious to keep a lid on his costs, assisted by Scania’s fuel-efficient engines. By tailoring his new trucks to meet his needs and expectations. Fork2U now has a well-established and cost-effective specification and a servicing plan that allows a high degree of predictability in terms of running costs, as well as an attractive workspace for his drivers,” Mat says.