By Lindsay Wood, Director, Resilienz Ltd.

Googling “Truck Driving Back Pain” I got 36,600,000 hits (truckers’ sore knees got 7,000,000). I doubt the sore back stats will surprise readers, and sadly I’m not about to suggest a miracle cure, but the websites all said something like ‘it’s a good idea to incorporate more movement’. Easier said than done for long-haul truckers, I know, but it did put me in mind of dinner with a bunch of friends a few months ago.

As the host, I was up and down a fair bit, and someone commented that I kept easing my back. One thing led to another, and it emerged that one of the guests was a design engineer with Wellington-based Limber Office Ltd, an innovative company that started tackling back pain in the workplace by redesigning desks.

“So,” someone asked him, “what’s the best position for working at a desk?”

“The best position’s the next position,” came the instant reply.

Apparently, Limber’s desks are designed for movement, for dynamic standing, sitting and even floor-based activities. Maybe I needed one, because I spent long – as in loooooong – hours sitting static at my computer. My back was evidence.

I pictured a desk somewhere between an aircraft undercarriage and a high-end baby buggy, with air cylinders, cables, and 26 pages of instructions (including screeds of warnings).

Wrong! As I discovered yesterday, when Yachal, the engineer, turned up at my place.

“Here Lindsay,” he said through his mask, “try this, it’s the Limber Mini.” He slid a small but solid box onto the ground and climbed back into his van. “I forgot the instructions, but you’ll figure it out!”

Eagerly I opened the box. No air cylinders, no cables, not a screw in sight! Just four strange pieces of plywood. Surely not a practical joke! Could this really be his all-singing all-dancing, multi-adjustable desk?

Now some of you likely glanced at these odd shapes and immediately knew how they fitted, but I wasn’t so quick. I scratched my head, shuffled them around and tipped them at different angles.

The matching slots were a clue, the unequal slots another, then it came together. (“Good grief,” I can hear you gasp. “Just how hard is it to assemble four pieces?!”)

But there were more surprises.

The two unequal slots interlocked easily yet still formed a firm inclined frame, with the different heights of the slots setting just the right angle. Clever. And the equal slots on the two desk surfaces slid smoothly over the main frame, then amazed me by simply locking level at whatever height I selected. Suddenly there it was, my all-singing all-dancing, multi-adjustable desk! Without a single fixing, and with the adjustable desks just gripping in place, it seemed audacious.

So what’s this to do with the Trucking Towards a Better Future competition? Well not, sorry to say, by fixing truckers’ backs – at least, not in the cab (though my lumbar region is looking forward to me trying it).

But how about thinking outside the square? The desk certainly illustrates that. Or KISS – Keep It Simple, Sweetheart? What a great example, even if there’s clearly lots of hidden effort to get to ‘simple’.

Which points to ‘sweat the detail’. I can imagine Yachal working out the friction between pieces of plywood, experimenting with centres of gravity, and testing thicknesses to balance weight and strength. (Remember Thomas Edison’s “Inspiration is 99% perspiration”?)

And if we’re thinking carbon footprints, low-tech solutions are so often better than high-tech ones, especially when they use timber.

Then, maybe more than any, ‘giving it a go’. It would be so easy to have the idea of the ply desk and think “that wouldn’t work,” or “surely someone cleverer than me has tried it already,” or …

So if you’ve got any idea to help decarbonise the heavy transport sector (and really that means saving fuel, even a drop at a time), don’t be put off by simple, or by thinking someone else must have tried it. Give it a go! Write it down, get it into the competition!

Have you got a simple way of making the world better and more efficient, especially from a supply chain and general business perspective? Then enter the 2022 Trucking Toward a Better Future competition. To find out how, read the rules, and check the terms and conditions, click here: https://www.nztrucking.co.nz/trucking-toward-a-better-future-get-your-entries-in-2/