Bird’s Eye View

BIRDS EYE VIEW by Carol Messenger

One Small Step

Arecent report looking into the driver crisis within the Transport Industry asked children of you couldn’t just take a day or a week off when you wanted to. Don’t get me wrong – I love driving and no facilities available, to go to bed sweaty and dirty because you can’t have a shower to clean up, to make do with a pie or a Transport Operators if they were planning on following their parents into the Transport Industry.

The report stated that only 4% of those surveyed had any desire to follow their parents in their career choice.

Back in the old days, transport was a family business.

Kids would grow up learning to drive with Dad or with an Uncle and more often than not they would then just graduate into driving themselves. Today this is just not happening A shower and toilet every 200km or so on the and this is contributing to three major highways – Great Northern, NW the real shortage of drivers Coastal and Great Eastern – say eight each on the that the whole of Australia is experiencing. So why aren’t kids taking three major routes with 24/7 toilet and shower block - can you just imagine the luxury up driving jobs, why are these long time trucking families closing up?

I think that there are several answers - the first being that life on the road can be very lonely. You are away from home for long periods of time, you lose track of friends, you miss many special occasions and it seems that the ‘normal life’ just passes you by.

I have been driving trucks for nearly 40 years and the number of weddings, birthdays and special occasions that we missed far, far outweigh those that we attended. We were on contracted runs and I particularly love the long distance driving but now that I have a Grandchild, I don’t want to miss out on spending time with him. Drivers today have very little family time – they spend long periods away from their wives and kids and it is mentally tough. Huge amounts of time and money and research is spent on programs for FIFO mining workers as it is recognised that the strain of being away from their families for extended periods of time is not mentally healthy but there doesn’t seem to be that same support for Transport Workers. At least when a FIFO worker comes home, they get maybe a week at a time home but a Truck Driver is lucky to get one or two days – and often that time is spent cleaning and servicing the truck. So the opportunity to get quality family time is greatly diminished. This alone can often be the final nail in the coffin that turns a relationship sour. Life on the road is also not easy – what other job would expect you to have to go to the toilet behind a bush because there are sandwich for dinner because you can’t get a proper cooked meal after 7pm at night, to try and sleep only metres away from a busy highway because the parking bays are full and your driving hours are up, to put yourself at risk of huge fines and prosecution because you have made a mistake on your logbook and I guess the worst of all is to put your life at risk every day because of other incompetent road users. And we wonder why kids don’t want to join this industry. Why would they want to put up with all this? The Government makes squillions of dollars from the Transport Industry with taxes, permits, regulations, fees and whatever else they can think of to throw at us, but are not prepared to put back. It really wouldn’t be that expensive to put a shower and toilet every 200km or so on the three major highways – Great Northern, NW Coastal and Great Eastern – say eight each on the three major routes with 24/7 toilet and shower block - can you just imagine the luxury? Can you imagine the difference that it would make to Transport Operators? It would be just one small step for man but (sadly) forever a pipe dream for those that carry Australia.