The Regional Supply Chain Runs on a Workforce That Doesn’t Fit Any Platform’s Category
Author: Darren Tredgold, General Manager,Independent Steel Company
The industrial gig economy is the workforce segment nobody talks about. I manage three steel distribution yards across South-East NSW, and every morning the trucks leaving our Queanbeyan branch are driven by blokes who own those trucks. The forklift operators unloading steel in our Nowra yard might work for us three days this week and someone else the next two. Project managers quoting structural steel for our clients sometimes quote timber or concrete for another supplier the same afternoon.
None of these people are employees. None of them are gig workers either. The industrial gig economy they operate in sits somewhere between those categories, and it has been completely overlooked by every workforce platform, policy reform, and tech startup chasing the future of work.
Owner-Drivers Are Not Uber Drivers With Bigger Vehicles
When people hear “gig economy,” they picture someone delivering takeaway on a bicycle. The industrial gig economy looks nothing like that. The workers I depend on have $200,000 to $400,000 invested in crane trucks. They hold Heavy Rigid licences, crane operator tickets, and rigging qualifications. They know how to restrain 12-metre structural beams on a flatbed so nothing shifts through a roundabout on the Kings Highway.
An owner-driver who has run steel for us for fifteen years is not interchangeable with a name on a platform. Under Australia’s Heavy Vehicle National Law, every party in a transport chain shares legal responsibility for load compliance, fatigue management, and safety. That means I need to know and trust the person behind the wheel. Chain of Responsibility obligations are fundamentally incompatible with anonymous driver matching. They demand relationships built over years, not algorithmic assignments.
The economics reflect that depth. The Victorian Government’s Rates and Costs Schedules put the capital cost of a prime mover alone at roughly $221,000. Diesel, the Road User Charge, tyres at $550 each, insurance, registration, and financing eat into margins before the driver earns a dollar. These are small business operators carrying serious risk. Treating them like any other type of freelancer misses the point entirely.
Casual Yard Workers: The Hidden Layer of the Industrial Gig Economy
The second group powering the industrial gig economy is casual yard staff. Forklift operators, yard hands, warehouse workers. Australia has roughly 71,300 forklift drivers nationally, 96% male with an average age of 42. It is an ageing, shrinking workforce with no obvious pipeline of replacements.
In our region, the challenge is worse. Around 63% of working residents in the Queanbeyan-Palerang area commute to Canberra for government jobs. We compete with the public sector for every worker. Regional rents rose 6.2% in 2024, and the South Coast housing crisis means even when we find someone from outside the area, they often cannot secure a place to live.
These casuals earn $30 to $42 per hour depending on experience and tickets held, covered by awards like the Storage Services and Wholesale Award 2020. In theory, they are employees. In practice, many cycle between distributors, labour hire firms, and construction sites week to week. They are technically employed at each engagement, but the pattern of work looks far more like the multi-client contractor arrangements that platforms like Remotify help businesses manage in the digital world. That blurred line is what makes the industrial gig economy so difficult to classify and so easy to ignore.
The Law Keeps Shifting Under the Industrial Gig Economy
The industrial gig economy sits in a legal grey zone that just got greyer. The Closing Loopholes Act 2024 reversed two High Court decisions and now requires employment status to be determined by the practical reality of a working relationship, not just what the contract says. Sham contracting penalties have increased fivefold.
In NSW specifically, 2025 amendments to Chapter 6 of the Industrial Relations Act expanded owner-driver protections to cover micro-fleet operators and gave the NSW Industrial Relations Commission power to regulate remuneration across entire transport supply chains. The Fair Work Commission’s Road Transport Expert Panel is now handling applications for minimum standards orders covering distribution drivers. Every regulatory shift adds new compliance layers to an already complex workforce arrangement.
For businesses that pay contractors across multiple jurisdictions, this complexity will sound familiar. The challenge of classifying workers correctly, staying compliant across different regulatory frameworks, and managing payments fairly is not unique to digital freelancing. Industrial supply chains face the same headaches with higher stakes: get it wrong and someone could be seriously injured under an improperly restrained load.
Industrial Gig Economy: Why No Platform Has Solved It
The industrial gig economy remains untouched by technology for structural reasons. Airtasker handles one-off tasks. Uber Freight moves containers interstate. SEEK lists permanent roles. None of them verify crane operator tickets, track forklift licence renewals, calculate penalty rates under overlapping modern awards, or manage Chain of Responsibility documentation. This workforce demands all of that before a single tonne of steel moves.
Globally, Workrise (valued at $2.9 billion) serves skilled industrial trades in the US energy sector. Veryable lets manufacturers build reusable labour pools for on-demand warehouse workers across 23 US states. In Australia, Sidekicker covers hospitality and light warehousing. But nobody serves the intersection of owner-drivers, industrial casuals, and multi-client specialists in building materials and steel distribution.
The gap persists because informal systems work well enough for individual businesses. Phone calls, text messages, word of mouth through the local football club. My Queanbeyan yard manager knows every reliable forklift operator within 50 kilometres by first name. That is powerful. It is also fragile. When that yard manager retires, the network they built over decades goes with them.
The Construction Boom Will Break the Old System
Australia’s infrastructure pipeline stands at $242 billion for FY2025 to 2029. The National Housing Accord targets 1.2 million new homes. Infrastructure Australia projects a workforce shortfall reaching 300,000 by 2027. In regional areas where renewable energy projects are concentrated, the shortage is forecast to quadruple between 2025 and 2027. That pressure will hit the industrial gig economy harder than any segment because these workers are already stretched thin.
Every crane truck operator, every experienced forklift driver, every casual yard hand in South-East NSW is going to be pulled in multiple directions simultaneously. The businesses that hold onto these workers will be the ones that treated them well before the boom made them scarce.
That is the competitive advantage hiding in plain sight. Not a platform. Not an algorithm. The industrial gig economy runs on relationships, trust, and fair payment. Investing in those things before the market forces your hand is what separates distributors who thrive from those left scrambling. For anyone navigating the current economy as a business owner or a contractor, the principle is the same whether you are writing code from a laptop or driving steel across regional NSW: the people who pay fairly, communicate clearly, and build genuine partnerships will always attract the best talent. That is true in the digital freelance economy. It is just as true in the industrial gig economy.
Darren Tredgold is General Manager of Independent Steel Company, an Australian-owned steel distributor serving South-East NSW from branches in Queanbeyan, Nowra, and Moss Vale.
