How can the trucking industry possibly move forward when governments continue to make ill-informed ministerial appointments?
Well, to steal the words of a grouse song, it’s a case of: “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you”.
We have a clown over in Western Australia making aspersions about Professor Ann Williamson, when Prof Williamson has only ever analysed the insanity that we call road transport and has had the intestinal fortitude to tell it how it is.
So why does some ‘Johnny come lately’ or ‘modern day load agent’ who doesn’t employ truck drivers feel the need to denigrate someone who only seeks to protect our industry from people who only see things the way they always have been.
That the person in making vile comments about someone that could buy and sell her a dozen times over with morality. And as for putting a lot of time and money into compliance, yeah sure, it might seem like a lot of money to her, but probably not quite enough compared to what is required over on the east coast. So perhaps this person would do well to keep her disgusting and revolting uneducated opinions to herself.
Clueless appointment
You don’t have to be a fly on the wall to work out who decided that Barnaby Joyce would be the new national Transport Minister – clearly his boss (another WA connection).
When are we ever going to see someone take on a ministry that has some working knowledge of it and won’t have to rely on the financial interests of those that live life hanging from the transport money tree?
There’s no doubt that Joyce has been accosted by one of the biggest insignificant people in trucking who continues to spew out the garbage that safety isn’t related to rates.
How does he think an owner-driver can maintain his equipment when he has limited ability to dictate rates? Consistently carting freight at breakeven rates has a major and undeniable effect on safety, but this minion will have the ear of the transport ministers again and again, but truck drivers and owner-drivers won’t.
It’s just another demon who fights tooth and nail against the wisdom of Professor Williamson and has the audacity to quote the reduction of truck accidents in other states. Trouble is, more freight moves through New South Wales than any other state, so it is an insult to use those figures.
Saying truck drivers work long hours but are tightly regulated is skirting around the fact that while drivers are being fined and held accountable, the companies and their managers are not. Where a driver attempts to manage his fatigue is never something this grub will ever mention.
Supplying drivers with ‘away from truck accommodation’ must be uppermost in the discussion, going forward, as they like to say. Long haul long distance drivers must have their loading and unloading times reduced, and those that can’t must start being paid for every Minute involved so they can offset lost available driving time with the money made while doing the load task. As the above non truck-driving, self-deemed expert knows, the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal would have sorted all this stuff out by now, well and truly, but he will never admit to that.
It’s like his dislike of electronic work diaries (EWDs). The only reason the Australian Trucking Association (ATA) is dead against them is because it will mean that drivers will finally have a way of insisting that we get paid for all we do, and it will prove conclusively why all truck drivers, regardless of task, must be paid by the hour for every minute we work and drive. Bring on EWDs!
Credit due
I’ve been reading the thoughts of Toll Logistics CEO, Michael Byrne, in various papers and industry blogs, and was lucky enough to listen to his words explaining to Tom Elliot on 3AW about how he actually agrees that we are allowed to drive too many hours per shift, per week, per month. He went on to say that he thinks the 17 hours in WA is dangerous, and that in the Northern Territory they are allowed 18 hours.
Well, didn’t the phones light up with a myriad of current and former subbies wanting to air their knowledge of just how they were pushed beyond legal fatigue laws on a regular basis when doing work for Toll.
Personally, I think it’s great that Byrne speaks about the ludicrous amount of hours that the trucking industry has grown to consider normal. The most unfortunate thing about trucking is that 99 percent of the trucking fraternity can’t, or won’t, think outside their own little world. They don’t seem to have the ability to think like someone that can only be described as a ‘normal person’.
Normal people average less than 40 hours per week work. Most normal people sleep in their own bed at least 300 times per year. Normal people think that anyone doing more than 10 hours overtime per week is crazy, and doing an average of 30 hours more than 40 hours per week is just plain stupid.
Here we have the CEO of Toll (formerly of Linfox) saying “the three big killers on the road are speed, fatigue and alcohol” and followed up by saying “there wouldn’t be anyone of your listeners, Tom, that would say that a man or a woman should be made to work behind the wheel of a 64 tonnes vehicle or a roadtrain for 17 hours a day”.
It must be said that, regardless of the skeletons in Toll’s cupboard, Byrne can only be commended for what he said. He was quite matter of fact and spoke with passion about something that he clearly believes in. So it shouldn’t be hard to get him to put Toll’s money where his mouth is and make some obvious changes to the way Toll operates.
For starters, he has the ability for all subcontracted loads to be made depot to depot only, reducing the fatigue of the very owner-drivers his company may well need later that same evening.
He also has the power to engage a Pony Express style line-haul operation, whereby trailers are shuttled into a smarter system that relies on less hours at the wheel for individuals. It can be done.
He is in a position to start up an information sharing paper trail that can open up the dialog, so everyone in the transport chain can make each sector aware of problems being encountered, no matter where or when. That’s instead of the way it is now, whereby it’s a case of “off you go, don’t be late”.
What he didn’t mention was the elephant in the room. The fact that the rate paid by Toll isn’t a ‘full cost recovery rate’ and does not factor in all the variables which can, and does, place the provider (owner-driver subcontractor) in a run-at-a-loss situation quite often.
Butterfly effect
The NSW Roads Minister, Melinda Pavey, aka ‘Miss Electric Shock’: Again, when are we going to get someone who is worthy of the ministry that they are given. In Miss E Shock’s case, one that perhaps has an MC licence?
When the PC lunatics started slating gender equal governments, who would have thought we would be hamstrung by an inept butterfly that in time will prove to be a huge mistake for the incapable NSW government.
What chance has trucking got when we are surrounded by people that are so far out of touch with what needs to happen that they will keep on making the exact same mistakes, because they are listening to the same inept, self-proclaimed, so-called experts.