When I was growing up, I remember whenever anyone mentioned the 21st Century, I imagined we’d be crossing the world in supersonic jets like the Thunderbirds or heading to work in a flying car like the Jetsons. Before you say I’m showing my age, I’d like to clarify I was there for the reruns, but not the originals. And yes, Thunderbird 2 was my favourite – my love of freight started early.

With the first quarter of the 21st Century coming to a close, we may not be flying around our neighbourhood yet (thankfully), but the real miracle we are living is the speed of communication. Not only can we get any amount of data from A to B at the speed of light, but we also have the world in our hands, where we can search up anything anywhere at the touch of a button. Something my three boys have grown up with and take for granted (no card catalogue at the library for them).

This has both up and down sides. To steal a quote, we are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.

Knowing what matters and what doesn’t, and how to sift the chaff from the wheat, is challenging.

One side effect of speed-of-light communication is that change is also flying at us far faster than we have time to process, digest, absorb and critically assess. We sprint from task to task, customers get impatient faster, and we all have shorter attention spans. This makes running a business even harder.

Last week I talked about how the New Zealand transport system has entered a period of unprecedented change, with a government in catch up mode.

These changes are going to materially impact how you do business as a freight transporter. The difficulty is, these changes are being designed now, but you may not notice how they affect you until they turn up in the months and years ahead. And you need to focus on today, getting the goods delivered from A to B for your customers, which brings enough of its own challenges.

This is where National Road Carriers come in.

When you join as a member, you are asking us to be your voice to government, councils, media and the community. And you want to know what changes are coming, and what they mean to you, and what NRC is doing to make sure they turn up in a way that makes your job easier.

We take this responsibility seriously.

Over the last year, the team has been busy working hard at making how we do this even better. Transport is simple and complex at the same time. Not everything can be distilled down to a 2-minute radio interview. We want to give important changes the time they deserve, to discuss the pros and cons of a policy and what’s best for road transport. So, NRC decided to launch our On Schedule podcast series with New Zealand TruckingMedia.

We want to give you the opportunity to hear more about complex topics, get the questions you have answered, and understand why the first answer is not always the right answer. Interviewing thought leaders from around the industry, the entertaining Dave McCoid asks all the questions you want answered, including the hard ones, and has a laugh along the way.

We’ve had lots of great feedback – people are really enjoying having a complex topic like time of use charging or heavy vehicle decarbonization broken down and demystified.

Today we are also launching our very first digital edition of our much-loved Full Throttle. With so much change happening, once a quarter no longer cuts it, so we’ve decided to send it out monthly.  A new feature over the print edition is the Advocacy section, with news in brief and a legislation pipeline.

These sections will provide short briefs of key changes happening that matter to your business, and what they are doing.

NRC news in bite sized chunks, so you can spend less time worrying about what the government is tinkering with, and more time delivering for your customers.

Make sure you take a look, I hope you enjoy it.

– By Justin Tighe-Umbers, chief executive, NRC