Archive, Industry News

Changing driver behaviour the Ian Pendered way

After a few frights on the highway, Ian Pendered began to question his driving habits. His passion for safety intensified when he started employing drivers.

Ian Pendered’s approach to road safety has matured since he started trucking in the 1970s. He is now CEO of Pentrans Consulting.

Ian Pendered passed his truck licence in Campbelltown, New South Wales, on his 18th birthday in 1972, and delivered a load of cattle in a petrol Bedford that same day. A year later he was in the Northern Territory carting livestock in road trains.

He has clocked up several million kilometres since then, driving for A&B Dean, Chinchilla Transport, Wrights Cattle Transport, Morrison Bros Dairies and other companies. He has also been an owner-driver.

As Pendered matured, so did his attitude towards safety. “In my heyday I drove trucks as fast as the rest of them,” he says. “We did what we did back then because we didn’t know any better.” Many of the older drivers he looked up to drove too fast and overloaded their trucks. “We just followed in their footsteps.”

But after a few frights on the highway, he began to question his driving habits and change his behaviour.

Pendered drove in the Northern Territory for Wrights Cattle Transport.

In the late 1990s, as part-owner of Specialised Bulk Haulage and Hillston Agricultural Services, he began employing drivers and took a serious interest in safety. “Once I was responsible for people’s lives, and getting them home to their family safely, I then started to adopt driver fatigue into my system.” And he joined the TruckSafe program.

Now he is CEO of Pentrans Consulting, which he founded in 2003. There he shares his passion for safety with drivers and trucking companies. He is a TruckSafe and NHVAS accreditor and operates a training organisation at Wilton, NSW.

In the August issue of Owner//Driver Pendered shares his ideas of how the industry can attract the next generation of truckies. He believes it’s time for a fresh approach in the way police and other enforcement agencies treat young drivers. “If we do treat them differently, we may attract some more.”

Previous ArticleNext Article
Send this to a friend