Opinion: Bridging the gap

Truck journalist and driver Bruce Honeywill says there's got to be a better, more respectful way of enforcing road freight regulations

There seems a broad and deep gorge in Australia's road transport industry; a valley rarely bridged.

On one side reside the 'shiny bums', as many of my colleagues of the road call them: the bureaucrats, corporate high-fliers and so-called representative organisations.

On the other side of that broad and vacuous gap are the trucks on our nation's highways, the drivers, the mechanics, the loaders and yard people. A different world than that of the cliché-speak of the media releases coming from Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane – you get the picture.

And often, the only close contact blokes and women on the road have from 'the other side' is the spidery network of enforcement agencies. Over the past month apparently 'tis the season to be making an impression, with a variety of task forces actively enforcing laws and regulations in most states.

The word was out in Queensland. The Task Force had hit the road, starting in southern parts of the state. Then the UHF radios rattled: the Task Force is set up at Julia Creek. The Task Force is here and the Task Force is there. Drivers complaining about being hit for minor logbook infringements. It was only a matter of time…

I pulled the quad around the T-junction from the Landsborough Highway onto the Flinders Highway, my destination of Cloncurry only 15 clicks away. I swung around the left-hander off Fishers Creek bridge and the pads were lit up like the circus had come to town. Great flood lights, highly reflective police officers walking around with bright LED light wands, a six-pack of candy cars, big vans marked Police Investigations Unit.

I pulled off the road. They were polite if without humour. Handed down my licence and logbook, blew into the breathalyser, did the drug test thing. They were all men and women of the Queensland Police Force, no main roads people present.

A senior officer told me he was going to check the logbook; he walked over to a collapsible desk under bright lights and delved into my history. I could see him wading through my pages. I felt like a school kid when a teacher is marking an exam. If he finds one minor mistake, one addition or subtraction in hours incorrect, that could blow all the income for this trip. More, probably.

He came back, passed the book and licence up to me and said everything was okay. I pulled out and sailed into the 'Curry to quick-hitch trailers. I was lucky. Any of us can make a mistake and that mistake can cost.

I was checked at those pads five times in a week. Same procedure. And, you know, it's not the checking; it's not the expectation that I've done some minor thing wrong. It's the overpowering force of armed men and women, Glocks on the hip, like some checkpoint between countries stopping terrorism.

It reduces you, eats at your confidence and spirit. You might be a professional with decades of experience, but you are diminished.

There's got to be a better way to find a partnership of all on the road. That gap needs to be bridged.

Opinion: Bridging the gap

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