By NHVR Michelle Taylor, Acting Chief Operations Officer
This grain harvest season, the NHVR is wanting to remind primary producers of the important role you play in the safety of heavy vehicle drivers, whether you’re using your own heavy vehicles or contracting the service.
It’s important to identify and reduce risks associated with the transportation of grain, which includes factors like managing driver fatigue, monitoring the mass and load of the heavy vehicle and ensuring it is mechanically sound.
The NHVR’s compliance approach to grain harvesting this season will be a combination of our day-to-day roadside intercepts and Heavy Vehicle Safety Station inspections, as well as cross border collaboration with a series of local operations across our southern region.
For New South Wales and Queensland, we will still be conducting day-to-day heavy vehicle monitoring and focus on intelligence gathering that we can then analyse and use for future harvest seasons. The data we collect will assist us in driving future intelligence led operations.
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As an example, we recently completed an operation in our central region where our focus was on heavy vehicles that meet oversize/overmass criteria. The operation focused on larger combinations and loads transported on major arterials during the day or night. The goal of this operation was to reduce the safety risks for local drivers and the public for when these larger loads are on the road.
Additionally, we also wanted to ensure that operators had the correct permits and adhered to curfew and restricted operating times on these routes.
Some of the risks identified with this operation were that almost half of the vehicles inspected were aged over 10 years, with almost 25 per cent aged over 20 years.
Vehicle maintenance
With ageing vehicles and/or seasonally registered vehicles, it’s important for operators to keep on top of vehicle maintenance to ensure they’re roadworthy both at the beginning of harvest and throughout. One of the ways to accomplish this is by performing a daily pre-start check, which is a visual inspection that can be done on the heavy vehicle prior to it leaving the yard, depot or rest area. The NHVR has a pre-start checklist guide that you can use as a reference point on our website.
Fatigue management
There are rules for operating fatigue-related heavy vehicles, however the general principle is that drivers must not drive any heavy vehicle while impaired by fatigue. This applies to all drivers and operators, including casual drivers and farm workers.
A question we often get asked is if farming activities are counted as fatigue related activities – most activities are not classified as fatigue related activities, however, they may still result in heavy vehicle driver fatigue. We strongly recommend to get familiar with our heavy vehicle fatigue management webpage.
Grain Harvest Management Scheme (GHMS)
Different grain harvest management schemes currently operate in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. These are state-based schemes which means that allowances for mass and operation conditions can vary between the states. South Australia does not have a scheme but runs a mass loading management concession for both general mass and higher mass limit operations.
The NHVR encourages operators to become familiar with the various grain harvest schemes applicable in your state.
Mass and loading
Any operator who is using a GHMS or mass loading scheme, we encourage you to stay up to date with the latest requirements to utilise these tolerances. As an example, often telematics are needed to run mass loading, and limits are put in place for a reason. There’s no margin for error when it comes to heavy vehicle safety, so ensuring that you aren’t placing a tolerance on top of the weight you’ve been issued through a scheme is imperative.
Whether you’re a loader, unloader or operator, you need to be aware of the role you play in ensuring the heavy vehicle does not exceed its mass limits. There are different classes and options available to allow operators some flexibility to make the most of the vehicles’ capacity. For more information on those, you can read more on our primary producers webpage.
All primary producers and contractors need to take the time to ensure they are doing everything that is reasonably able to be done to remove safety risks related to the use of heavy vehicles.
We’re continually developing guidance and tools to guide and help primary producers meet the safety needs within their business.
For more information on Chain of Responsibility, visit our website.
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