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Investigation at Moree clears driver

Ron Finemore Transport managing director Mark Parry.

BY JAMES GRAHAM

THE truckie who unwittingly found himself at the centre of a social media firestorm after being filmed at a Moree rest area with three rear tyres missing has been cleared of any wrongdoing by his employer.

Ron Finemore Transport (RFT) managing director Mark Parry told Big Rigs that the company has conducted a thorough investigation of the November 5 incident and is more than happy to have the driver stay on.

According to their findings, Parry says the centre tyre on the B trailer has “failed” at some stage, more than likely as a result of severe potholing in one part of the Newell Highway near Moree.

“Which in the dark, you’d have no hope of seeing,” said Parry.

“The driver probably didn’t know he had a flat and then a period later he’s gone over some rough ground again and one of the tyres has gone, the front one we think, and then finally the third one has failed.”

Parry believes all three events have happened over a 20km

The truckie was a victim of circumstances on the flood-damaged roads, believes his employer.

distance, from the evidence the company has gathered from the scene, with the second tyre blowing 10km after the first and third one 5km from the rest area.

“The driver has made the decision to continue on to Moree to a safe place to park. He had no right decision to make at that time.

“If he pulled into hard shoulder and got bogged we would have had a different set of videos. If he’d tipped his trailer we would have had a different set of videos, or if he’d stopped on a dark road at 2-3am in the morning and someone has run up the back of him, it would be a different issue again.

“In hindsight we could all say you might want to do something different, but he’s made all the decisions he has for reasons he thought were right at the time.”

Parry notes that RFT has been putting out lots of memos to its drivers to be aware of water, and road damage, and asking them to keep clear of hard shoulders for that very reason.

He also said that well before the driver had a phone camera pointed at him later that same day, the truckie had made the RFT operations team aware that he’d had three failed tyres.

“He was then asked to go and have a rest for seven hours because it was going to take a while for a crew to get there.

“As the video is taken it looks like he’s just got out of his truck in his normal gear without his uniform and didn’t know about it.

“That was after he’d had a sleep and woke up. You’d like to think that people would help each other.

“I think if I’d got out of a vehicle and someone was filming me, they would have got a few more harsher words said at them.

“I also think as an individual he was a bit embarrassed as well, and we all would be.”

Parry said that once RFT had established that the driver and other road users were okay,

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and the equipment had been recovered, the next step was to work through the investigation, which also involved co-operating with police and the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator.

“The trailer was within its maintenance period in terms of its periodic maintenance, and those tyres were changed at the end of September, so it wasn’t a tyre wear issue.

“And there’s very little, if any damage to the road because we’re running on aluminium rims, the weather wasn’t hot, and you could barely see a scratch surface on the road.”

Parry said the driver has been employed with RFT, a company that prides itself on its safety standards, since June after going through a thorough assessment.

“He went through a week’s induction, he went through buddy runs. We will now re-induct him as a matter of course and focus on the things that we think he might do better in the future, and again, I’m not blaming him because it was no right decision.

“We will make sure that we spend time with him with a gentleman called Brian Withers, I think is probably one of the foremost recovery and maintenance people in Australia just to take him through the things that he might see and hear when he’s driving a truck.

“And you know, he’s been open and honest in the investigation. He’s been willing to work with us. During the investigation, or any investigation, our people are stood down with pay, pending the outcome of that investigation and then we determine the appropriate course of action based on what happened, how it happened. Their level of honesty and their willingness to continue to work with us.

“So, this gentleman, as I said he’s embarrassed, he’s made decisions that he’s made for what he believed were the right reasons. And I can’t fault those. There’s no equipment issues that we can see. And we’ll train him, induct him, make sure we can get back on the road safely, and we go from there.”

Parry believes the real story is the poor state of the roads at the moment, exacerbated by the never-ending flooding ravaging the eastern seaboard and regional Victoria.

“It’s going to take many, many months before the road surfaces can be returned to anything anywhere near normal, and in the dark, in particular, I would defy anyone to pick up some of the damage in the road.

“We do ask people to drive slower, drive to the conditions, and then you get unfortunately, a lot of racist, vitriolic attacks that to me are unfounded, unreasonable and unfair.

“Some of the stuff they’ve been sending in is disgusting. They do it anonymously and we’ve got female staff here reading it. I had an Indian lady in one of our management groups and she went home last week in tears. She just couldn’t take it anymore.

“It’s a sad reflection on certain groups and certain people that they’re racist, and/or, they don’t recall that at one time they were younger and less experienced, and they also made mistakes.

“I’d like to think that we live in a world in which rather than we all pile on, that we’d help each other.”

The truck arrived at the Moree rest area with three tyres missing.

The ugly blight on industry

VETERAN interstate truckie Simon Thomson is adamant that the Moree TikTok clip wouldn’t have gathered as much steam online if the driver involved had been a white Australian.

Thomson, 50, is concerned by the amount of racism he sees in the industry and is speaking out in the hope of fostering more tolerance and acceptance of foreign drivers.

“Those Indian fellows are just like me, they work hard, and I’ve seen it, and there are a lot of good operators,” said Thomson, who has more than 24 years’ experience behind the wheel.

“I’ve been in this game a long time and seen just as many Aussie guys f##k up as Indians.”

Thomson says he felt compelled to come forward after watching the video clip.

“That poor fellow got backed into a corner and that’s why he was doing the finger to them. He couldn’t do anything else. If it was me, I would have punched on.

“There’s got to be some kind of support for these Indian drivers.”

Thomson said one of the biggest blights on the industry are the private Facebook groups which target Indian truckies.

Big Rigs approached one administrator for comment but was told: “Thank you for reaching out, but no thanks.”

Thomson has tried to have one of the groups shut down due to what he says are the derogatory nature of its posts which routinely apportion accident blame on Indian drivers under the guise of highlighting road safety issues, but has been ignored by Facebook.

“These sites need to be closed. They’re racist, it damages drivers and it will damage transport companies,” said Thomson.

Two transport bosses Big Rigs spoke to say they’d also tried to have the groups closed amid increasing fears for their staff’s safety while doing their jobs.

In October 2020, the Australian Trucking Association (ATA) and the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) released a joint statement calling on the trucking community to call out racism whenever it happens and celebrate the diversity of the industry.

The ATA and the NHVR made the call following reports of targeted attacks on multicultural truck drivers and racist comments on trucking social media pages.

ATA Chair David Smith said freight workers from diverse backgrounds had always made a massive contribution to Australia.

“The cameleers of the 1800s, the workers on the Snowy after the war and the drivers from all over the world delivering food and essential medicine during this pandemic: they all deserve our respect, and all of today’s drivers deserve a fair go,” Smith said. “The ATA is aware that some multicultural drivers are being harassed, in particular those of Indian descent. Racists on social media are egging each other on to ever more extreme actions, including cutting truck air lines.”

Smith added that we all have a responsibility to call out racism wherever it occurs. “And that’s exactly what this is. Racism. It is ignorant. It is stupid. And it is dangerous,” he said.

Anyone who has concerns about safety in their workplace can report it through the NHVR’s Heavy Vehicle Confidential Reporting Line on 1800 931 785.

Truckie Shane Thomson says drivers need more support.

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