Gilberto Fraçâo on growth
“Employees used to ask, ‘How far can I grow with Mercúrio?’ and I would tell them that only they set their limitations. But back then the boundaries of the Mercosur region were actually the limits. Today they can go to more than 200 countries.”
“Imagine and innovate”
Gilberto Fração grew up in the transportation and delivery business. Literally.
As the son of one of the four brothers who in 1946 founded Mercúrio—the transportation and delivery company that evolved into Brazil’s leading domestic delivery provider—Fração has known the business since he was a toddler running around his father’s desk. In 1974 he took his first paid position with the company, working as an “office boy” in the main office in Santa Maria City, where the business began. He worked part-time while attending university, and his main task was delivering interoffice mail.
In more than the three decades since that time, Fração has held many positions spanning virtually every area of the business. He worked as manager and later director of the maintenance and fleet department, He left the transportation part of the business for a period and started its first warehouse operations. After his return, he led administrative functions within the company, then became general manager of Mercúrio’s business across the state of Rio Grande do Sul. Today, his title is human resources director, but Fração—a personable man with an assuredness in his step, an even tone in his voice and a friendly gaze—likes to say that he’s always been in human resources. He’s always enjoyed working with people and often felt a sort of paternalistic relationship with Mercúrio’s employees and their families. Over the years he’s also led numerous community service projects that support the wellbeing of children in daycare centres, students in local schools and the elderly in and around the areas where Mercúrio operates.
But besides his affinity for people, there’s something else Fração has brought to the company throughout his career—innovation. His natural curiosity and his inclination for engineering drove him to seek out new and better ways of doing things. Fração regularly travelled abroad, visiting other companies in the industry and learning firsthand what they were doing. What he saw on those trips often captured his imagination, and he brought back the best ideas and incorporated them into Mercúrio’s business. According to Fração, doing things better doesn’t always mean doing them differently. “What is good, you copy,” he likes to say.
Among the good ideas Fração brought back and put to work for Mercúrio was a modular maintenance system that replaced worn engine components with spares so trucks could stay on the road while repairs were made at the shop. He also devised a way to get a higher return on the company’s investment in vehicles, implementing a rotating schedule for drivers that allowed Mercúrio to utilise the vehicles 18 hours a day. And when he and a fellow director visited Rotterdam in the early 1980s and saw one of the world’s first automated warehouse systems, he knew it was a development not to be ignored. He brought the concept back to Brazil and started a profitable warehousing business.
Fração’s push for innovation helped make Mercúrio the industry benchmark in Brazil. Managers from other companies, not only those in the transportation industry, sought his counsel in developing similar innovations in their own businesses.
Even today, more than a year after Mercúrio became part of TNT in 2006—with Fração leading the team that negotiated the transaction, no less—he continues moving the company into the future. And while his continued presence has been an assurance to many long-time Mercúrio employees, it is by no means a token appointment. Fração genuinely believes the business has the potential to grow significantly in the next several years, and bring added benefits for both customers and employees.
More than a year after the acquisition, Fração is pleased with the integration process. While he always believed Mercúrio could learn from TNT’s international operations and business processes, he’s been happy to see that TNT is also willing to learn from the local knowledge and the deep expertise Mercúrio built over its more than 60-year history, and he’s enjoying the productive exchange of ideas and skills. What’s good, you copy after all.