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Oversize Overmass delays costly for Doolan’s

An incident cost Doolan's Heavy Haulage at least $22,000 — just one of many

 

Drivers left waiting roadside in the height of summer, a 13-month wait on journey approval and the need to start the entire process over again with the slightest change are among the obstacles Doolan’s Heavy Haulage managing director Warwick Doolan has run into in recent years.

Doolan is far from alone, with a number of companies and the transport and logistics organisations that work with them calling for a Senate inquiry into the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) and its heavy vehicle Oversize Overmass (OSOM) permit system.

Under national heavy vehicle regulations, companies must apply for a Class 1 OSOM permit if the load they are carrying does not meet the mass, dimension or operating requirements of the state they are travelling through.

Giving the powers to the NHVR in February 2014 was seen as a means of creating a one-stop application portal for companies moving oversize goods interstate – with the regulator now running the process within the ACT, Tasmania, South Australia and Victoria.

But Tasmanian Heavy Haulage general manager Steve Ryan tells Owner//Driver that instead of streamlining the process, the NHVR was only making it more complicated.

“All they have really become is an additional level of bureaucracy in the permit process,” Ryan says.

“So, we apply to them, they disperse [the details of the application to transport the oversize load] to all the asset owners along the route that we nominate, and then we sit and wait for all those asset owners to approve or disapprove or ask questions.

“That is what is taking so long.”

This could mean waiting a long time without hearing about the progress of the application – only to be told of difficulties much later.

Compounding the problem, according to Ryan, is

that permit applications are treated on a case by case basis, with no data transferred between applications.

“So every single application and load permit that goes in is starting from scratch again,” he says.

“No one is collecting that central data, so they are not making the permit process easier on themselves… they start from ground zero every day.”

A long wait

Doolan found this out the hard way, when his company found itself looking to transport two oversize loads – including one from Western Australia to St Mary’s in New South Wales.

The transport was to take place over a long weekend in January, with permits already secured for the WA and NSW legs, as these had been arranged with state-based authorities.

“The one thing we didn’t have was the connecting piece – SA and Victoria, both now controlled by the NHVR,” he tells Owner//Driver.

Doolan says he had been promised that approval for the St Mary’s-bound cargo would be received by the Thursday before the long weekend – but it did not arrive until the Sunday night.

Ultimately, it was revealed that the delay was caused by a lack of permission from the local government of Kimba in South Australia – but when Doolan contacted the local government himself, he found that the road in question was an OD route – for which blanket cover had already been provided.

“So that weekend I had $2 million of equipment held up on the side of the road, with two escort vehicles and a transporter with a customer’s machines on it,” he says.

“They were held up for three days, so we are talking $7,000-$7,500 a day in lost revenue, so both of those cost us $22,000 over those three days for the long weekend.”  

For Doolan, it seems the challenge of keeping the needs of different administrations in line has created more problems than the previous system.

“Prior to NHVR getting involved all states could and would issue a permit in say a week maximum,” he says.

“That because the states handled them individually and each state knew exactly what was required… they had arrangements with all these municipal councils and we didn’t have to go to and ask all these road managers to give us approval.”

Doolan and others are pushing for a Senate inquiry as to the reasons for the delays, as detailed by Owner//Driver here.

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