NTC

Bring on the Quads

Trucking operators could achieve higher operating masses without the paperwork and expense of PBS. A new proposal by the National Transport Commission takes a pragmatic problem solving approach to getting higher productivity trucks on the road. The announcement suggests operators could increase the payload of certain heavy vehicle combinations by up to 16 per cent on some routes by allowing quad axle groups in place of current triaxles.
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Fatigue and Safety - Talking Turkey About Trucking

If it’s Broke, Don’t Fix It

The latest communique from the fourth meeting of the Transport and Infrastructure Council turns out to be much like the ‘Curate’s Egg’, that is, good in parts. There are some encouraging signs in the decisions by the assembled transport ministers of Australia, but the industry is to remain overcharged for rego.
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Fixing Fatigue

Here’s an opportunity for the trucking industry to get its input into developing driver fatigue laws. A discussion paper released by the National Transport Commission (NTC) is looking for suggestions on how to collect better data to inform improvements to heavy vehicle driver fatigue laws.
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Improve the Chain

The chain of responsibility (COR) legislation needs to be streamlined with safety prioritised is a common view in the trucking industry. The current legislation sets out COR duties by attempting to prescribe exactly how businesses must operate, discouraging innovation and creating unnecessary red tape.
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Fatigue and Safety - Talking Turkey About Trucking

Who’s Responsible?

Apparently, there are some chain of responsibility laws in place in Australia. We are told the rules make the responsibility fall on whichever party involved in the supply chain forced the hand of the truck driver to break the rules. These rules have been in place for over ten years now and, for most people, nothing has changed.
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COR reform on track

Reforms to the chain of responsibilities regime has taken a step closer with a recent release by the National Transport Commission. The NTC discussion paper details the proposed specific requirements of participants in the supply chain.
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Fatigue and Safety - Talking Turkey About Trucking

Finally…some real progress

The whole process of moving regulation of the trucking industry onto a national basis has been a long slow grind. Real results ending the ridiculous cross border issues we meet every day have been hard won and often quite small victories.
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It’s all about high productivity

The National Transport Commission has said productivity will become the main focus for its work over the next four years. A statement released outlined a range of projects designed to boost transport networks. It says it will seek to identify ways to deliver quicker and cheaper road, rail and intermodal networks, particularly for Australia’s freight and logistics industry. This announcement follows the approval by Australia’s transport ministers of anew work program last week.
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Fatigue and Safety - Talking Turkey About Trucking

Let’s get serious

How the atmosphere has changed in the last few months? After a bad year in 2014, when it looked like the project to get a true national legislation and regulator for the trucking industry looked in danger of stalling, and the various state ministries and regulators were rubbing their hands in schadenfreude at the misfortunes of the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator, we seem to be turning a corner.
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Review flawed rego charging

There is a general recognition the current way of calculating the road user charge for trucks on Australia’s roads is flawed. In 2014, the government froze the charge for the year after questions were raised about incorrect calculations about the number of trucks on the road.
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