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If it were a film, or rather a Korean television series, the favorites of Barbara Agogliati, 52 years old, nuclear engineer, fleet manager of Autosped G (Gavio group), four thousand heavy vehicles and two thousand drivers, leading road haulage company in Italy, would have a screenplay with black and white flashbacks.
First scene. A spartan office in Castelnuovo Scrivia, in the province of Alessandria, a stone’s throw from Milan-Genoa. The sky outside the windows is grey, the day gloomy. Black bob hair, blue eyes and glasses, laptop in hand. With a series of apps Barbara Agogliati manages fleet data that arrives in real time. He monitors the trucks and drivers, the trips, the itineraries. She knows everything about every single medium. How many brakes, how many accelerator strokes. Weight, consumption. When the truck was in neutral.
A driver’s report card
Second scene. Black and white flashback. Early eighties. In the house in Rozzano, on the outskirts of Milan, the Agogliati family is at the table. Pietro, Barbara’s father, has a special seat with double space. He always needs to keep a large sheet of paper nearby on which the itineraries, the drivers and the trucks of Agogliati Giuseppe and Bernardo, the family company, are marked. Next to the paper, a telephone of the kind with the dial that rings continuously. A driver delivered. Peter takes note and gives the arrangements for the next journey. Loading, departure, arrival, times. Barbara observes. Another ring, another delivery. Tomorrow it will be the turn of another member of the family, Giovanni, Mario, Romeo.
Agogliati Giuseppe and Bernardo, the family transport company was founded at the end of the Second World War in the Piacenza area by Pietro’s father, Barbara’s grandfather, and his cousin Mario, Romeo’s father, the current CEO. Grandfather delivered the wood with mules. Then it became a modern transport company, with the first trucks on the first asphalt roads. In the 1960s, Giuseppe and Bernardo moved to Rozzano, next to the Milan ring road during the economic boom. Growth was continuous and continued until the 2000s, when the Agogliati family and the Gavio family decided to merge their oil product transport activities into a single company. 55% of G&A is now held by Autosped G of the Gavio group, chaired by Luca Giorgi, a giant with 835 million euros in revenues and eighteen subsidiaries.
A mix between the mechanic and the manager
«My father», says Barbara, «remained in the company and continued to manage the fleet. He retired in 2020, not many years have passed, but from the point of view of management and technological transformation it is a geological era. At the beginning, my father took care of travel planning, vehicles and maintenance. He was a mix between mechanic and manager. Even today he recognizes the breakdown of a truck by the sound of the engine. Another world“.