The Man's Message
Established 2003 | "Tetritus fortis sine gym"
Friday, July 25, 2025
Crew Of The Weeks
Reigning Gold Liftie recipient, Sam Haughton-Greene, along with moving stalwart, George McWha, take home the COTW prize this issue; delivering a borderline perfect moving experience.
"Where to begin?? George and Sam were nothing short of AMAZING !!!! They were punctual, courteous and then proceeded to be so efficient and hard working. I was in awe of their ability to work seamlessly as a team and nothing was too much trouble. What fine men and truly a credit to the company. I will go on to recommend MWAV as they were recommended to me."
Way to tick just about every box there is you two, come catch Jack Tandy around the depot to collect your just desserts.
WorkSafe Site Inspection
On Monday, 21st July, The Man was treated to a rigorous safety inspection and interrogation of our practices, policies, & procedures by WorkSafe Victoria. After 1.5 hours of questions, answers, and demonstrations, the inspector was pleased to see that The Man takes the idea of workplace safety seriously and went as far to recommend The Man self nominate for a Workplace Safety Award in the coming year.
This is a fantastic testament to all those staff involved in the creation and implementation of safe working practices at Man With A Van and we encourage all staff to continue to place the safety of themselves and their teammates at the core of our work.
To read the WorkSafe Inspection report in full, click >>here<<.
All reports are now in one place
Whether you want to report 1. Injuries 2. Vehicle accidents 3. Broken Items 4. Safety issues 5. Discrimination or harassment 6. Anonymous suggestions 7. anonymous incidents 8. E-mail the office or 9. Call the office - there is now one URL to head to for all your reporting desires:
tny.mwav.org/report - Save it to your phone.
Safety Tip
Truck Safety: Always re-clip the back doors, even in depot. The fleet has experienced at least three incidents of the back doors flying open on the road over the past few weeks. Swinging doors can have extremely serious ramifications - one instance resulted in a collision with another moving car, shattering their driver window and side mirror!
Secure your doors and clip them in to keep your truck and the general public from the flying door.
Got your bits and pieces?
BEFORE YOU LEAVE EACH ADDRESS - you must check to see if you have all your equipment.
1. Have we left elastic bands & straps holding doors open?
2. Did we leave the tool kits in the bedroom?
3. Did we use any extra equipment (e.g., suction cups, shoulder dollies, depot tools etc.)?
4. Do we have all our high value items Phones - Drills - EFTPOS terminals?
Do a walk through with the customer to check all items are where they should be & nothing has been left behind.
Taxing Times
The end of financial year tax documents have been sent to the ATO. That means you can expect to receive a notification on your MyGov account from the Tax Office that it's time to complete your tax return.
A few expenses you can claim as tax deductions: PPE (eg safety shoes), union fees, washing your uniform (laundry).
Poker Recap
Forever the bridesmaid, but now the King of the deck. It's not usually how the saying goes but after the latest night of EBA negotiations, MWAV Poker night returned upstairs to the Abbotsford depot.
Thom Lidgerwood made light work of early challengers - including this scribe - only to have the big money showdown with the carryover champ, Jesse Burge. But on this night, everything was coming up Milhouse for Thom so he deservedly took home the chocolates and the stack of cash. Congrats, Thom.
If you would like to be involved in the next MWAV Poker Night on Tuesday, 26 August, >>RSVP here<<
HR's stuff on puff
A full fleet clean was carried out this week only to find that an alarming number of trucks contained vapes, loose tobacco, and butts. It is worth reposting this seriously concerning anonymous suggestion from our teammate whose cries can no longer fall on deaf ears.
"Can everyone please stop vaping in the trucks? I know it's super cool at the moment, but for those of us who don't like inhaling cupcake flavoured steam, it's not that cool. Literally every second shift I get asked 'Do you mind if I vape?' or even have someone start vaping without asking. Please vape on break or when you're outside the truck. It's not OK to just have the window down. This is coming from an ex-smoker, so believe me I get the addiction, but I never forced co-workers to breathe my smoke inside the trucks. Please stop!"
It is the law that all workplaces are smoke and vape free - that means in the trucks too. If you smoke or vape in the depot or in your truck, you are breaking the law and will face disciplinary action.
If your partner does this in the truck, please tell them to stop immediately and report them to a manager so this behaviour can be rooted out.
Tommy's Tales
This absolute monster of a dining table unfortunately suffered a fairly major blow during transit, breaking the support beam underneath due to a heavy load being placed on top of the unit. Making matters worse, the table also received a decently hefty surface scratch leaving the item now both functionally and cosmetically damaged.
With some excellent clear pictures and info provided by the damage report, we started looking into repairs to get the thing back on it's legs. While the structural repairs were fairly straightforward, the surface damage unfortunately requires a full sand and re-finishing of the surface, something that would require even more transport and risk of further damage.
After some long-winded negotiations, the customer eventually settled on a discount to the value of the repair costs though with somewhat of a monkey's paw attached. We'll be moving this unit again next month in August and applying said discount to the follow-up move. If you find yourself face to face with this monster, please take extra special care to avoid causing any further damage. Use plenty of blankets and avoid putting too many heavy items on top of this behemoth or you may find yourself moving it again to the repair shop and back. 🥲
The Vibe
A positively unprecedented turnout on the vibe front this fortnight with a stunner 4.90 survey average! 🤯
It's just about the best result possible with almost no negative feedback whatsoever, incredible work everyone, let's keep the vibe riding high!
Suggestion Box
Suggestion: "I'd love to see a news item with tips and tricks from the crew (or even from an OT) about safe manoeuvres and avoiding injury. E.g. I recently figured out that a pain in my left side upper back/shoulder blade area was likely because I was turning trolleys with one hand. Especially for heavier loads it's probably best to turn the trolley with both hands and step to turn instead of twisting. This will spread the weight across both sides and probably reduce chance of injury."
Response: Love this proactive suggestion. The OHS committee have put their heads together to come up with safety tips and tricks to avoid injury and or work smarter. This will be rolling out in each edition of The Man's Message for the foreseeable future. Thanks again.
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Suggestion: Is there a reason why our days and jobs keep getting shuffled around during the week? It’s understandable if it’s for efficiency, but it can be frustrating to arrive at the depot in the morning and start planning your day and then when you get to your first job and boom out of nowhere the jobs get taken off us or replaced. Especially when you’ve already contacted customers, sometimes even mid-job, to adjust timings or make the day run more smoothly. It’s also confusing for the customers when they start receiving calls from different people trying to organise a move that was already sorted.
Response: Fair question. There are a great many reasons why jobs change. Whether it be job cancellations, other jobs running over/under, other jobs not able to start early or need to be pushed back, training or injury limitations, sickies, lift bookings, settlements, the list goes on. It's the nature of the job that jobs will often move from one truck to another and it can be frustrating that customers are contacted by multiple people - which is why notes and communication from the office to the trucks and from the trucks to the office is so essential. Hopefully you can take solace in the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus who said it best way back before FileMaker was even a thing: "The only constant in life is change."
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Would you like to send in an anonymous suggestion to make MWAV a better place to work? Please do so with complete anonymity right here: