If ever a case were needed for the FIFA World Cup coming to South Africa, then Autopax offers the perfect illustration of the many benefits, as Andrew Pelis discovers.
Pretoria-based Autopax runs coach transportation services across South Africa. It is owned by the state agency PRASA—the South Africa rail authority—and primarily runs long distance coach journeys within the country and across its borders into neighbouring states.
The company has witnessed many improvements over the past couple of years, as CEO Saki Zamxaka explains. “The transport system in South Africa has undoubtedly improved and that has helped us in many ways,” he acknowledges. “The better road surfaces have reduced our need for maintenance on vehicles, which has reduced our costs but importantly, has also lessened the risk of roadside breakdowns and the implications these have on driver hours.”
The company operates two established brands: Translux, which offers the customer luxury travel; and City to City, which provides a more basic service within the country.
Zamxaka says that although the Autopax name only came into being as recently as April 2009, the company has operated under various guises since 1912, becoming incorporated in April 2001.
Competition in this sector is rife; but Zamxaka says Autopax holds its own well on the grounds of its reputation for value, safety and reliability. The arrival of the FIFA World Cup was the catalyst for an ambitious R1.4 billion investment that has seen the company increase its fleet of coaches in anticipation of the demand for transport during the tournament.
“It is a pretty competitive and open market and affordability is certainly an issue,” states Zamxaka. “We have started to target the leisure travel sector recently and with the FIFA World Cup imminent, we have introduced a charter business that will include providing transport from some of the railway stations.
“This included an injection of cash that paid for the addition of a new fleet of vehicles and we are now starting to see a turnaround in the business as a result of this. The fleet for the World Cup will be entirely new and will take our total number of buses to over 500, making us the largest fleet owners in South Africa. We expect these vehicles will then operate for up to a further six years.”
The company has also recruited additional drivers over the past few months, ahead of the surge in business that this June’s fiesta promises. “We have higher staff numbers than normal to cope with the demand and recently brought in a number of contract drivers,” Zamxaka explains. “We have in place a number of client commitments and needed the extra workforce in order to deliver on these promises. We will therefore have 1,200 drivers during this winter’s tournament and 2,000 staff overall but numbers will of course reduce to normal afterwards.”
The recruitment drive has been exhaustive and detailed, with candidates having to meet strict requirements following medical and criminal checks and psychological evaluation to determine suitability. Zamxaka says that each driver then has to undertake in-house road and customer service training, as the role entails extensive interaction with customers.
“We have a national call centre and three major operations centres in Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town, plus a smaller depot in Durban and sales offices around the country,” he comments. “All of our frontline call centre staff have undergone training on how to better handle complaints and how to successfully engage in marketing.
“Further training has taken place with Mercedes-Benz, who supplied our new fleet of vehicles and this will help us to better manage our maintenance going forwards,” he adds.
Maintenance is a key issue for operations, as any maintenance problems to vehicles can cause big headaches in terms of downtime. In addition, recent health and safety regulations impact greatly on the time a driver must take to recover. Zamxaka says that much of the company’s training brings Autopax in line with the raft of recent legislation. “There are strict rules on the licensing of each driver who must have achieved a minimum 100 hours driving a public transport vehicle and who is not allowed to work more than eight hours at a time.
“The new traffic management laws have introduced a points system for the transport companies to adhere to, while the environmental laws actually criminalise some practices,” he states.
He cites the challenge of meeting customer expectations as a primary focus for Autopax. “We particularly aim to ensure our coaches depart on time and that the safety and reliability of our services is never compromised.”
Increasingly, part of that solution has come from investment in technology. The new fleet of coaches comes with sophisticated tracking systems that will monitor fuel consumption, driver behaviour and will ensure the correct routes are taken at all times. Zamxaka believes that this will change the company culture for the better and will ultimately help to drive down costs, particularly given the fluctuations in fuel prices.
He says that technology, and in particular the internet, has also begun to offer customers a new dimension when it comes to booking tickets. “This has definitely given us an advantage and those outlets that are not office-bound are doing much better—convenience is a major bonus for customers who can book from home rather than having to queue. Our existing system works very well and in the next week or so we will be going live with our latest development that ties in our payment systems.”
One of the areas that received greater attention when it was announced that South Africa would be host to the World Cup was the transportation network system. Much maligned, there has been enormous work undertaken to improve road systems and this has had both a positive and negative effect for Autopax. “This has been an interesting one for us,” Zamxaka affirms. “On the one hand, the improved roads now make for much more comfortable travel and also reduce the need for maintenance; however, we have also seen an increase in road tolls, so it has become much more expensive.”
With the economy having improved in recent months and a spike in business anticipated over the next couple of months, Zamxaka has good grounds for future optimism. “I think the key is to maintain our modern fleet of vehicles so passengers can travel in comfort; but we also want to increase our footprint throughout Southern Africa. We already operate services to Mozambique and want to get into Botswana, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.”
With such ambitions, it seems there is a lot of mileage left in the Autopax journey yet.
