BIG BROTHERS.

In the current economic climate, with increasing registration costs, dysfunctional and over regulation, intensive fines-regime, road tolls and so on, a sector of Australia's working population ( owner/drivers ) are being bled dry.

All this benefits the large corporations with their economies of scale, their links to government and their cheap contract labour.

Big Brothers....

Owner/Driver ( September 2010 ).
Brad Gardner.

Three of the industry's biggest players want government to force truck owners to install monitoring technology for speed and fatigue, but the Transport Workers Union believes transport clients should wear the cost, not owner-drivers.

Long Distance truck drivers should be forced to install monitoring technology in their rigs to crack down on speeding and fatigue offences, according to the nation's largest transport carriers.

Toll, Linfox and Asciano have joined forces to pressure governments to mandate GPS technology. The three companies claim speed and fatigue are the major causes of truck accidents and that tracking drivers will improve compliance and road safety.

Under the Road Transport ( Long Distance Operations ) Award, a long distance operation is defined as interstate work or a return journey exceeding 500km.

"We believe it should be mandatory for companies to monitor fatigue and speed using telematics technology," Toll, Linfox and Asciano write in their proposal to the National Transport Commission ( NTC ).

The NTC is currently looking at developing a national strategy for in-vehicle telematics to encourage the industry to adopt the technology. But the Transport Workers Union ( TWU ) has raised concerns over how owner-drivers will be able to afford to install the technology.

TWU National Secretary Tony Sheldon says transport clients that set the delivery schedules should be required to pay for the GPS devices. "An owner-driver should not have to pay thousands of dollars for a unit. If this cost is going to rest with anyone it must be the clients," Sheldon says.

He says it is easy to blame drivers if work hours are exceeded, but pressure must be put on those who set delivery times. "If we are going to see this rolled out in any capacity then the end result must not see drivers solely targeted-the clients schedule must come into the equation," Sheldon says. "This can't be used as another hit against drivers-this needs to go up the supply chain."

Sheldon has also questioned why short-haul operators should be left out of a monitoring scheme. "There are many accidents that happen on local work. The pressures there are the same and that needs to be acknowledged," he says.

Under the scheme proposed by Toll, Linfox and Asciano, the GPS devices will be capable of e-mailing messages to notify the vehicle owner of a breech, warn drivers when they are speeding and count driving hours to inform drivers when they are reaching a limit.

The monitoring tools will also be equipped with anti-tampering systems, traceable records, driver identification such as smart cards and measures to log accident data. However, the three companies want all information to remain under the control of a company instead of a system similar to the Intelligent Access Program ( IAP ) which transmits information to road authorities.

Companies will be subjected to external audits and accreditation such as an industry code of conduct and will provide the information in the event of a major incident or investigation. If their proposal is accepted, the transport companies want a single national standard to govern the scheme and believe the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator is the ideal candidate to develop guidelines. The Regulator will be running in 2013.

According to Toll, Linfox and Asciano, businesses should be free to use any device as long as it meets a national standard. The proposal has won the support of the Australian Logistics Council ( ALC ), which claims mandatory telematics systems will reduce the number of lives lost from heavy vehicle accidents.

But it says any compulsory scheme should be phased in over a period of time so trucking operators can gradually fit the technology. The ALC also recommends a subsidy scheme to encourage the use of telematics.

The push for mandatory monitoring contradicts the Australian Trucking Association's ( ATA ) position that the scheme must be voluntary. ATA Chairman David Simon says governments should encourage the use of monitoring tools to improve compliance and aid businesses.

"However, the ATA supports the use of supervised intervention orders specifying the use of telematics, applied by a court, for serious or persistant offenders with a proven history of non-compliance," he says. The NSW branch of the Transport Workers Union ( TWU ) has also opposed the mandatory use of GPS.

Twu Secretary Wayne Forno says governments should focus on introducing "safe rates" first to ensure drivers are paid enough to make ends meet. He claims GPS tracking will only treat the symptoms of speed and fatigue rather than stop it. "At the end of the day if the drivers out there aren't earning enough money quite frankly that still leads to those temptations to take shortcuts," Forno says.

"I certainly wouldn't endorse it ( as ) mandatory just at this stage as until such time as those other problems are fixed up such as safe rates." Toll, Linfox and Asciano also want government to amend the inconsistent fatigue management counting rules, which are catching unsuspecting drivers and companies. A queensland truck was recently accused of breaching his obligations in Victoria despite being compliant in Queensland and NSW.