Page 22 - Australasian Paint & Panel Magazine Mar-Apr 2021

Industry Insights
22
PAINT&PANEL MARCH / APRIL 2021
HAVE YOU EVER HAD THAT WEIRD SENSATION OF FEELING
LIKE YOU’RE SUDDENLY SEEING SO MANY OF THE SAME THING, WHEREVER YOU GO? LIKE DOGS? ASKS STEPHEN CORBY.
TAKE AD–VAN–TAGE
D
O YOU, LIKE ME, FEEL LIKE
you’re suddenly seeing dogs – and their attendant waste – everywhere you go. Apparently the demand for dogs in 2020 emp- tied animal shelters and created waiting lists for puppies - a phenomenon so stark
it was dubbed the Dog Drought.
While dogs are less likely to be deliv- ered to your door, just about everything else was over the past 12 months, as Australians were forced to adapt to a world in which physical shopping was,
for a while, a mildly dangerous hobby. This has meant that the other thing you’ve been seeing everywhere is deliv- ery vans, usually being driven by people who look like they’ve got eight hours of work to pack into their next 20 minutes. Close to nine million households like- ly developed a nasty case of RSI last year due to excessive clicking, with an addi- tional one million households per month
shopping online compared to 2019. Australia-based courier company Ara- mex reporting a 48 per cent increase in
deliveries in comparison to 2019. That’s almost 50 per cent more van movements compared to the year before.
With Santa quarantining in the North Pole, it fell upon Australia Post to meet demand and deliver everyone’s presents, with a tarmac-cracking 20,500 delivery vehicles on the road each day in 2020.
Demand was so great that 2000 motor- cycle posties were specifically retrained by Australia Post to drive vans. They must have enjoyed that on rainy days.
Overall, there were a whopping