42) A Comparison

Someone once said, don’t ask me who, that comparisons are odious but I don’t think they are always so. Having lived most of my life in Africa and coming to Australia late in life one cannot help but make comparisons. Africa has a vast population many without much education so unemployment is always a problem and that tends to keep wages low. Australia is not a heavily populated country, unemployment is not such a problem. With a strong trade union history wages are on average much higher. Because of this many labour saving ideas are used to keep labour cost down. Electrical goods are not repaired here as often as in Africa as an hour of a tradesman’s time can costs more than the price of a new appliance. In Australia people pump there own petrol, and for the most part do their own housework and their own garden. Many jobs like, refuse removal for one, are mechanised. In Africa if a truck load of goods need to be delivered the truck driver will be accompanied by as many assistants as possible and they would physically move the goods from the warehouse to the truck and then again from the truck to the store.

One evening I was sitting in our car outside the receiving bay of one of the large supermarkets that we worked for. A large truck pulled up with only the driver on board. He parked his vehicle but before jumping down from the cab he opened the rear doors with the automatic switch. He then climbed into the rear of his truck and with a hand held remote control moved his on-board forklift into a position to lift a pallet loaded with boxes. He then moved the forklift to the rear of the truck, which was in fact a hydraulic lift and still with his remote control lowered the forklift down to the ground level. Then he drove it through the receiving doors of the supermarket and unloaded the pallet in front of the waiting supermarket employee. Back went the forklift, back on to the hydraulic lift, back into the rear of the truck and collected a second loaded pallet. The process was repeated again and again until the truck was unloaded and boxes were all inside the supermarket storage rooms. I watched fascinated at the whole smooth process and what really amazed me was that while the driver was using his right hand to operate his remote control he was also holding his mobile phone to his left ear and chatting away to someone. So he could really say that he had literally unloaded his truck ‘single handed’.

This reminds me of a joke I heard long ago. They said that a contestant in a Single-handed round the world yacht race had been disqualified because he had used both hands. But this truck driver would not have had that problem.