Top-5 truck driver bugbears

Pull into almost any major truck stop in Australia and you'll find the same things: not enough bays, shrinking food options, facilities in questionable condition, and the quiet dread of an electronic logbook ticking toward a breach.

Paul Biagini, who drives refrigerated trucks across the country, sums it up in one word: "Disgraceful."

Drivers who were on the road in the 1970s and 'eighties '80s don't speak about the old roadhouses out of nostalgia. They use them as a precise measure of how far things have fallen.

Paul recalls the new Shell at Ulgandra, not built with front doors designed never to close.

"There was always a hot meal. The staff were truck drivers' wives and daughters. They knew you by first name, knew your wife, how the kids were going. It helped with the loneliness on the road."

The Golden Fleece had a section reserved for truck drivers and families: free coffee, free sugar, walk-in kitchen access.

"That whole sense of home away from home, it just doesn't exist anymore," he laments.

The roadhouse at Gundagai once had locked, hotel-style bathrooms that were clean every time. A friend of Paul's stopped there recently.

"He said you wouldn't let your dog bathe in the shower cubicle."

When the major chains absorbed mum-and-dad roadhouses, the kitchen was the first thing to go.

"All they’re interested in is selling a tank of fuel, a chocolate, and a can of Coke," Paul reckons.

Dennis Atkinson, who runs multi-combinations across Victoria, says it's not just the wall-to-wall junk food.

"I don't think the health commission goes through half of those places," he concludes.

Paul has written letters to transport ministers about the food situation. The reply is always the same; private enterprise, can't intervene.

"The regulator can turn up at your house on a Saturday night and demand your log books and bench you for two weeks," he tells me.

"They can tell the whole transport industry when to drive, when to sleep, when to stop. And yet they can't lean on the big fuel and retail chains to provide a decent meal!”

He puts out a challenge to nutritionists who write health columns in transport papers.

"Drive from Brisbane to Melbourne on the Newell Highway and tell me how many times you can get a good wholesome meal? After eight o'clock, your only hope is a service station pie."

Trucks have grown in length from B-doubles road trains, through to A-doubles and AB triples, while rest areas have not in many cases.

"I've seen some that I could get into at one end but would be almost impossible to get out of," says Dale Clay, who runs grain road trains across south-eastern Australia.

Often wherever there are amenities, cars and caravans fill the usable space.

"When there is somewhere to park, it's often filled with cars or caravans or cars with trailers," says Tony Shepard.

Signed truck bays without facilities? "There's a rubbish bin and that's it, which nobody empties."

Dennis flags a problem specific to grain deliveries: sites that are locked after hours with no toilets, under video surveillance.

"If you need to do number twos, you've got to hold it until you get to the next town and most of the time public toilets are nowhere near where you're allowed to take a truck," he tells me.

Shaun Orchard, who runs stock crates around the south-eastern states, also points to poor bay orientation at older facilities, leaving cabs facing back toward the highway.

The zero-tolerance electronic work diary has added a punishing new layer.

This scenario is now familiar to many drivers: approaching your hours limit, the bay you planned on is full, and going to the next one logs a breach that can't be removed.

"You've created a breach when it would have been unsafe to pull into the one before," Dennis explains.

"If you take it to court they say, 'You should have planned your trip better.' What about the car crash that held me up for 45 minutes?"

B-double driver, Tim Cossai was stuck in tunnel traffic for 15 minutes while the app counted down in red on his phone.

What if you're parked roadside in 40-degree heat, with no water, no toilet, and no food?

"Terrified to put the key in the ignition. I'd really like to know how that sits with human rights," Paul says.

One issue comes up unprompted in almost every conversation: hygiene, or lack of it.

Tim's pet peeve is drivers urinating on concrete, two metres from a patch of grass.

"It dries in, doesn't wash away. You'll be sitting in your truck wondering why you can smell urine. We're all trying to lift the image of truck drivers," he tells me.

WA road train operator, Laurence Forster says he's seen worse.

"I' ve also seen faeces on the ground. Go dig a hole and bury it! More often than not there's a toilet only a hundred metres away."

Paul Biagini says the decline reflects a basic premise guiding the organisations that now run these stops: you've got no choice but to be here.

"They spend millions on concrete parking lots and within three months the rubbish bins are overflowing. They don't seem interested in looking after their own assets," he argues.

"The people moving the food on your supermarket shelves, the fuel in your servo, the grain in the silos deserve better than that. So does everyone else sharing the road with them."

Related: What the driver test doesn't teach you