Newsagents in Albury no longer get The Australian delivered by trucks from the News’ Victorian business the Herald and Weekly Times. Instead, The Australian is being delivered by News’ NSW business Nationwide News. Woodonga, 2km away, still gets The Australian from H&WT.
This change will see The Australian no longer available for consistent home delivery as Nationwide News deliveries to Albury are consistently too late for home delivery. H&WT deliveries were on time for home delivery. Oh, there are enough copies of The Australian for supermarkets on an early truck from Nationwide.
The switch is an odd decision if the company really does want to sell more newspapers.
Mark..this will affect subbies and home delivery customers. This has not been thought thru. The Sun truck will now arrive here a few minutes after hitting Wodonga without Australians. We then will wait for up to 6 hours to get the Australian. Delivery guys gone at 6am, Flights to and from Albury will not have Australians, etc. etc. However, the Supermarkets will be able to supply what 4 Newsagents cannot. Maybe the Supers would like to deliver them as well.
Un- bloody -believable.
Baz
Careful what you wish for Baz. This decision by News is nuts.
That may explain the Australian circulation figures dropping 14% (not sure over what period), I was told this morning.
Maybe they are actually reporting the real figures and not the alleged inflationary one’s that have been rumoured over years gone by.
Regarding your post, As frustrating as it gets for the concerned business people.
How amusing to have to tell the poor lass from the Australian that her dear subscriber didn’t get her paper this morning because “Somebunny” had decided the truck from Sydney was a better way to go ! The lfet hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. I truly think this arrangement was news to the Australian as it was to newsagents,
and was handled by an expert in logistics in Sydney.
h
This “expert in logistics” was probably the same bloke who, a few years ago, took the distribution of NDD’s mags off CMD (who had delivered them reliably for years) and gave it to First Fleet who stuffed it up from day 1 and continue to do so with G&G & NDC today.
In regional NSW this problem has been ongoing for some time now. It presents serious OH&S issues for driver’s whom are then out on the road with much more traffic then they previously would.
In our region, particular “National” service stations receive newspapers before newsagents, the excuse being because they are open earlier.
I am the largest Newsagent in my area (by a margin of nearly x10), yet I am the last drop off by the Nationwide truck. For 5 years I have asked/begged/pleaded to be bumped up the “drop off” list, cinsidering the back of house work I am required to relative to all the other agents.
Nationwide’s response has been that “someone has to be last”. They truly do not care.
I have informed them that I will not be renewing my distribtuion contract. They basically shrugged their shoulders.
We are also at the end of the delivery run, despite constant pleading. We open earlier than all but one of our subs, but when the papers are late our own retail business has to wait. We were told to just open later.