Mount Isa is 1,800km from Brisbane, 900km from Townsville, 1100km from Cairns. It’s a long way out into the Gulf Country and with mining operations and tourism important to the economy, flights to the city are vital for workers and visitors to come and go.

So, when the number of flights into Mount Isa fell dramatically when the pandemic struck and travel restrictions and social distancing measures were introduced, it was a painful blow for local businesses to endure.

“We were shaping up to what we thought was going to be a bonanza year,” said Alison Dowling who, with husband Terry, owns and runs Hertz Mount Isa, last year’s winner of MTA Queensland’s Community Award. “Unfortunately, because most of our vehicle hires are with mining services businesses that come through the Mount Isa airport, that business all but dried up. Qantas went down to just one flight a week from Brisbane and one from Townsville. Virgin flights stopped completely. It has been very tough.”

Finding a way to navigate the very rough waters of the past few weeks has involved long hours and lots of communicating with their accountant, financial institutions, government departments, insurers and others, and the couple said that they were grateful for the help they had received.

However, when applying for the Queensland government’s COVID-19 Job Support Loan – administered by the Queensland Rural and Industry Development Authority (QRIDA) and designed to assist SME businesses affected by the pandemic to retain employees and maintain their operations – they did run into some trouble.
“It was a little confusing at first as to whether we should go for that loan or access the federal government loan plan,” said Alison. “We were advised to go for the QRIDA loan because if you apply for up to $100,000 you don’t need security. Unfortunately, we just received an email saying that there were no more funds available even though it is advertised as being available until September.”

The funding for that loan program was increased by $500 million on May 9. However, the couple have now been told that their loan application is still not eligible due to oversubscription.

With about 100 vehicles on their books, and with a handful of hires coming in, Terry and Alison not only had to find ways to save money on what had become non-productive assets, but also find somewhere to keep them, and they were able to do both thanks to the support of their insurer and the local business community.
“We worked with our broker and insurance company and reduced our premiums per vehicle per month by about 50 per cent,” said Terry. “We have also let the registrations lapse on about 40 per cent of them.

“We have had to park-up a lot of our vehicles and we are very lucky that we’ve got good relationships with other local businesses who have been very understanding and supportive in allowing us to put our vehicles on their land.

“And we have started to look now at doing some online car sales,” he added. “We had a rolling replacement program on our vehicles – what we call a guaranteed buyback – but that fell over and so we do now have cars we want to sell. They are great cars – less than a year old, serviced regularly, every vehicle photographed prior and post hire, cleaned and still under warranty. We are looking at selling them through the wholesale and retail market.”

Terry and Alison have been in business for 16 years and have lived through troubling economic times before – an experience they said had given them some strength to face the current situation. MTA Queensland has also been a tremendously useful resource for the business, they said.

“We were almost at this point when the GFC hit,” said Alison. “At that time, the commodities market crashed and coupled with the regional drought, this mining town was decimated.

“We learned some important survival techniques then that have helped us this time, and the most important is not to panic. You need to just look at what you can do and be positive in your outlook.

“We have also found that the MTA Queensland COVID-19 daily briefings have been extremely helpful,” she added. “There is a lot of repeated information going around, and that can get very confusing, but those briefings are positive, factual and I’d rather have just one or two trusted places send me that information.
“We have also been able to utilise the MTA Queensland partner lawyers,” she said. “And it was nice to be able to talk to someone who obviously has experience and could keep everything in perspective. When everything is crashing down around your ears and when you have staff to support, you need to keep nice and calm, so that support was really appreciated.”

Terry and Alison have worked hard to ensure that their team at Hertz Mount Isa maintain a strong connection with the business, even if the economic slowdown means that the work is just not there to keep everyone working their usual hours.

“Our staff have been very good,” said Terry. “When the flights into Mount Isa airport basically stopped, they sensed what was going on and so we discussed the scenario and talked about support such as the JobKeeper and JobSeeker programs.

“We have a staff of seven, with two casuals. The casuals are now on JobSeeker and our five other staff are on JobKeeper right now,” added Alison. “But we make sure all staff come in for a few hours a week so they have that contact with us and can stay job-ready. Also, our staff are predominantly Indigenous and Islander, and it is important to us to keep that continuity of engagement with them. That contact is also important because we can make sure that if staff need help in dealing with Centrelink and so on, we can assist with that. We look out for each other.”

The couple’s concept of looking out for each other extends further than this too, as they are encouraging their staff to take advantage of the downtime they have to take online educational courses and are making the computers at work available for them to use. Staff are also aware that the business undertook to sponsor the local Mount Isa Meals on Wheels service with a vehicle in March.

As for the future and life post-pandemic, there is both positivity and caution. Talk of expanding the business to Cloncurry and Longreach that began before the crisis continues, and there is confidence in the direction the federal and state governments have taken. But the question mark remains about when things can truly return to normal.

“We rely on the travel market and I don’t know whether things will get back to any semblance of what it was like before the outbreak until there is a vaccine,” said Alison. “However, no one knew how the virus was going to spread or how quickly, and if it hadn’t been for the lockdowns, we may well have had COVID-19 cases here in Mount Isa, so I do approve of how the state and federal governments responded. They worked together, they cooperated, and that, I think, showed true leadership.”

Source: Motor Trader E-magazine (June 2020)

22 May 2020