Over to you A FAIR GO FOR OWNER DRIVERS by Ray Pratt
Old trucks out – sensible thinking bureaucrats needed
I
t was with interest that I read a report put out by Austroads relating to the fact that Australia has a higher use of older trucks than most other countries. Austroads has published a research paper which analyses the impacts of an ageing heavy vehicle fleet and explores measures that have been used to manage this challenge. Trucks in Australia are older than in many other countries due to mainly the low barriers to entry exacerbated by having no secondary disposal market and few restrictions on how and where they operate. Austroads say the oldest heavy vehicles impact the community in several ways including air pollution, noise and health but until now, this issue has been hard to define and manage. Whilst there will be a negative response to this study it is commendable that what they say is true. Trucks built before 2008 are considered to be old and are pre our stringent emission rules. The trouble is nearly half of Australia’s heavy vehicle fleet is in this ‘too old’ category. The suggested changes to fix this problem includes looking at charging higher registration fees or restrictions on older vehicles having access to higher populated areas. Here we go again, where organisations define a problem and a solution without having much idea how our trucking
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WATM • July 2021
industry work’s. The answer always seems to be to increase charges. Have they ever thought that there is probably a very good reason why we drive older trucks. The transport industry in Australia operates on very tight margins. I’m sure that a large proportion of operators would love to update to newer trucks if they thought they could afford to. It’s not by choice but out of necessity that we are forced to keep older trucks just to keep in the industry. While the situation exists where our rates are and margins are tight then we will never break this cycle. The transport industry is on a high at the moment and it is the perfect time to get a rate increase but
Bureaucrats think they have the solution to problems with the transport industry, which is invariably increasing fee’s which does nothing to help when the margins are small and often non-existent
I’m sure the multinationals will fight tooth and nail to keep rates down. Many years ago, a large transport company that I was working for came up with the idea that we were not to have any trucks in the fleet over ten years old. The reason according to them was to lift the image of the company but no they were not going to pay any more money to their drivers or contractors. I pointed out to them that all of our trailers were well over ten years old and certainly could do with replacing so it would only be fair if we had to replace our trucks then they could replace the trailers. This became the end of that little idea because they were not prepared to spend company money on new trailers. In fairness, while some of the Owner Driver’s trucks were old they were very reliable and did an excellent job. I’ve seen time after time bureaucrats think they have the solution to problems with the transport industry, which is invariably increasing fee’s which does nothing to help when the margins are small and often non-existent. As always, to the people who identify the problem, how about talking to the actual people who do the job? Walk a mile in the shoes of a truck driver then you can be qualified to talk on our behalf. Keep it safe, Ray Pratt.
