Freight mix-up ruins thousands of dollars worth of fresh and frozen food

He was forced to throw away $5600 in spoiled cold and frozen goods bound for his grocery store when a mix-up occurred in the packing of fresh and frozen goods to the western town, discovered hours before its centenary celebrations got underway at the end of April.

“Our fresh goods were in temperatures of minus 21 degrees for a day,” he said.

“I ended up throwing out 30 different types of fruit and vegetables.

“This has been a debacle and Aurizon has got to be accountable.”

It was a similar story for Trevor Mead, who wrote off grocery items valued at $3775.

“The first off the truck was a pallet that should have been frozen: icecream was running out the buckets,” he said.

“We use a Raytek gun to measure the temperature of incoming refrigerated goods.

“They should have been between minus 15 and minus 20 degrees, but they were nowhere near that.”

He put in another order, which arrived at around 6pm two days later, on a Saturday, just before Quilpie’s centenary ball.

“Mistakes can occur but it seems like a fair bit of it lately,” he said, suggesting that the three short weeks in a row, meaning they were cut back to one service a week for each of those, could have impacted the service.

An Aurizon spokesman said that unfortunately there had been a service fault in providing refrigerated goods to customers.

“Aurizon has an established process to address claims from customers and is working through the matter.”

Mr Paulsen said the latest incident had been the latest in a number, beginning with damage amounting to $250 on April 4, and another causing $500 worth of damage on April 11.

“Every time a truck turns up now, I wonder what’s going to be inside.”

He said he expected he would be compensated but the incidents affected the reputation of his business.

“We maintain a high standard and we don’t want this,” he said.

As a member of the local bowls club, Mr Paulsen was also aware of  difficulties being experienced by that group following the rollover of a contractor’s truck in the Morven district in mid-March, when a $32,500 shade system for the club was damaged.

“There was $4000 worth of stock for our shop on that too – we’re still waiting to see our money for those,” he said.

Mr Mead lost a pallet of groceries, chickens and smallgoods in that incident, salvaging only cigarettes.

“We’ve had the road service for four or five years,” he said.

“The service hasn’t been too bad, but when it goes bad, it goes real bad.

“Most are disappointed with the service from Aurizon.

“When you get one service a week, you expect it to be good.

“And the service from Aurizon isn’t cheap anymore.”

When apples were frozen solid and icecream turned to slush in the Aurizon delivery to Quilpie at the end of April, it didn’t affect just that community.

Rob Dare operates a grocery store and roadhouse at Bedourie on the Queensland-Northern Territory border and found himself with empty shelves and pockets emptied to the tune of $2500.

He was forced to source older produce from Quilpie, and some from Mount Isa, shouldering the extra costs involved.

The trip to Quilpie is a 1260km round trip and it’s 1000km to Mount Isa and back.

Rob said it was not the first time this had happened to his business.

“It’s the third time – stuff gets out there and it’s had it,” he said. “The only thing worth salvaging this time were the tomatoes, and even then we only used them in our cooking.”

He has also had the experience of goods being left in Roma, after being transported by train to that town and unloaded for an Aurizon-contracted truck to collect to take to Quilpie, where a third operator is engaged to bring them out to Bedourie, once a fortnight.

“It gets unbearable when you’re at the end of the line,” he said.