Truckies 'scared as hell' over safety crackdown

Friday, 12 April 2019

The NZ Transport Agency's gloves off approach has seen a growing number of operators ordered off the road for breaking the rules.

In the past six months it has revoked or suspended the licences of 51 persistent offenders.

And it has given notice of similar action against a further 114 transport operators and drivers, potentially putting many jobs and crucial freight and passenger services at risk if they don't shape up. 

Some smaller fry caught up in the crackdown have closed down or sold up, but larger players are fighting back through the courts.

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In recent weeks Wellington bus company Boss Transport and major Northland carrier Stan Semenoff Logging (SSL) have both taken High Court action and won the right to continue operating, albeit under stringent conditions, while they await full hearings.  

SSL director Alex Semenoff says the company hauls $87m worth of timber annually, servicing customers from Kaiaia to Auckland, so closure would be a big blow.

As well as their own 89 staff, they 'indirectly touch' 1000 jobs in Northland once sawmills, stevedores and other businesses are taken into account

Although still on the road, SSL is hurting, and it's not just from the mounting legal bills.  

To fill a driver shortage, Semenoff says the company employed 37 Filipino migrant workers and was trying to bring in a further 25, but seven Filipino drivers had quit out for concern about the future of their jobs. 

This week Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones, who is related to Stan Semenoff, claimed Filipinos were being encouraged to 'spy' on businesses and offered immunity from prosecution, something he had discussed with the Transport Agency's chief executive in relation to its case against SSL.

That led National to demand he resign for interfering in the prosecution.

Boss Transport has been less high profile, but director Malcolm Little complains Transport Agency moves to revoke his licence are destroying his business as the uncertainty costs him contracts.

'I've had contracts worth $400,000 where customers have walked away because they think there is a chance I might not be in business.'

With 57 employees and 70 buses carrying more than 100,000 commuters and school children up to 3 million kilometres a year, Little has a lot at stake when his case goes back to court in May. 'I'm scared.'

Road Transport New Zealand chief executive Dennis Robertson says he's not the only one. 

'The current approach is scaring the hell out of the industry and as a result there are a lot more conversations about how standards need to improve, so it's having the desired effect, particularly the revocation of transport service licences.'

Urgent action 

The Transport Agency makes no apology for its tougher stance on safety. 

The aim is to prevent horror crashes like the one where an over-tired truck driver who failed to take rest breaks ploughed into a car on the Desert Road killing two young boys and injuring their parents. 

After years of taking a softy, softly approach, the agency is over offering multiple chances to operators who ignore efforts to make them toe the line over dodgy maintenance, overweight vehicles, repeated speeding infringements, and breaches of driving hour limits. 

In mid October law firm Meredith Connell, led by managing partner Steve Haszard, was brought in to help the agency sort out 830 outstanding compliance files.

Within weeks Blenheim-based McCrostie Transport was ordered off the road pending the outcome of a licence revocation appeal.

It had accumulated a long list of traffic offences and failed road side inspections over 14 years, and joint owner Daryl McCrostie had been disqualified from driving seven times.

Such a lengthy history of transgressions is no longer tolerated. 

In announcing SSL's licence revocation, Haszard said it came after extensive efforts over three years to get the company to meet the required transport operator standards and it was 'either unwilling or unable' to comply.

He says the agency is not oblivious to the economic impact of putting operators out of business, but ultimately safety is paramount.

'We're certainly not afraid to take action against large operators.'

Pulling permits

Haszard is at pains to point out that with 45,000 transport licence holders throughout the country, the number of poor performers really in the gun is very small.

And he adds that most of the notices to revoke or suspend will be resolved with no further action being taken because operators up their game.

But the move away from 'self regulation' has had consequences. 

In the past six months the agency has revoked 20 transport service licences, split between solo owner operators, and companies which range from a house mover to rural trucking firms.

That's well up on 66 revocations over the previous three years.

There is also a firmer line on permits allowing truckies to carry heavier loads on specified routes.

So far this year the agency has cancelled 17 such permits, compared with 10 for the whole of 2018, mainly for traffic offences and serious breaches of permit conditions. 

Robertson says this is a big deal for operators who have invested in expensive equipment they now cannot fully use. 

'Suddenly you have a vehicle that can take 62 tonnes and you're right back to 46 tonnes, so from a productivity and profitability point of view, you're losing money.

'Whereas before you could do a job with three trucks, now you need five.'

Fast track enforcement

Trucking Association chief executive David Boyce says no one disputes the need to enforce the regulations, and there's 'absolutely no sympathy' for deliberate rule breakers who unfairly gain a competitive advantage. 

What's shocked some operators is the speed with which the new regime is acting. 

'They're given the opportunity to sort themselves out and if they can't, well [the transport agency] is coming down with the hammer pretty quickly.'

Three days before Christmas a bailiff served a revocation notice on Dave Craven's Cambridge-based shuttle company ordering him to surrender his transport service licence within five days.

He is still smarting about being told he was not a 'fit and proper' person to run a transport business and says about 20 speeding tickets over eight years wasn't a bad record - 'when we worked it out it was one speeding ticket for every 278,000km.'

In the end he opted not to fight the notice. In February he sold Roadcat Shuttle at what he claims was a $300,000 loss and it is now operating under new ownership.

In its case against SSL, the Transport Agency also claimed father and son directors Stan and Alexander Semenoff, and general manager Daron​ Turner, were not fit and proper persons to control the operation. 

The recent High Court judgement said it was arguable the agency had erred in relying on 'general alleged failures of SSL as a corporate entity,' without considering whether each of the individuals in control was responsible for the company's alleged failures.

Transport Forum chief executive Nick Leggett says the Northland case will test the application of 'fit and proper persons' criteria.

'Our view is that operators of course have a responsibility for the behaviour of their drivers.

'There's no bypassing responsibility or delegating it if you are in effective control or own the business.'

Point scoring

In early May a trucking industry summit in Christchurch will discuss the new regulatory environment and the future of the much-maligned operator rating system (ORS) is likely to be a hot topic.

Launched in 2004, the ORS was designed to reduce crashes by recognising operators with a good compliance record.

In allowing SSL to continue operating pending a judicial review of its licence revocation, the High Court judge said he attached some significance to the company's four star ORS score. 

However the Transport Agency is reviewing the ORS, has stopped issuing new scores, and its website advises 'operators and customers should no longer rely on ORS as a measure of safety and compliance.'

When ORS began, operators were all granted five stars and lost points for infringements such as speeding and having vehicles fail roadside inspections or certificates of fitness (COFs).

Robertson says that was a ridiculous situation. 'They should have given everyone zero and made them earn their stars.'

Heavy vehicles require COFs every six months, but that can be pushed out to 12 months for highly rated operators. 

Robertson has strong reservations about the widespread practice of getting pre-COF checks done.

Any faults identified are fixed, allowing a vehicle to sail through an official COF inspection to avoid sullying the operator's ORS score with a fail.

Some truckies cutting corners only do maintenance when a COF is due, so their vehicle can be unsafe for a period. 

'If you're doing 300,000, 400,000 or 600,000km between COFs, things are going to go wrong.

'Under the regulations your vehicle must be roadworthy 24/7, 365 days a year, not just when it turns up for a COF,' Robertson says.

Dennis Cadigan owns Hokitika trucking company Service Cartage, and he too has reservations about the ORS despite his own five star rating, 

'We're proud of that and we worked pretty hard to get it.'

He says the system is unfair because operators driving mostly on rural back roads, rather than main highways, are far less likely to get pulled over for roadside inspections and pinged for vehicle faults or log book infringements.

Added to that, police roadside checks of commercial vehicles have dropped by more than 13,000 over three years.

'If you're not exposed to  [roadside inspections] and you run as a bit of a rogue operator, you don't get caught, so you maintain a good rating,' says Cadigan

Bus and Coach Association chief executive Barry Kidd says a review of the algorithm used to calculate star ratings was long overdue and challenging disputed scores was difficult.

'A single event like a speeding offence for a driver, who is not necessarily even driving a work vehicle, can take an operator down from a five star to a four star, or even less.'

Public ratings

Originally the plan was to make transport operator ratings public, in much the the same way cafes and restaurants have to display certificates rating their food hygiene practices. 

But Kidd says there was never enough confidence in the ratings, and some transport companies threatened legal action if NZTA ever did that, 

In 2017 there were 144,148 trucks on the road, 15,000 more than in 2013, and the trend is set to continue as we rely on road transport to shift freight, 

A draft freight plan for the South Island predicted that between 2012 and 2042, road freight would increase almost 70 per cent, equating to an additional 4667 truck trips per day. 

For First Union transport and logistics secretary Jared Abbott that's a good reason for more transparency over operator standards.

'You're talking about health and safety so I don't understand why it would be commercially sensitive.

'These trucks share the road with the public … so there's a public interest in having that information.'

Haszard agrees and once the new ORS is sorted, it will go online for all to see. 

What next ?

Leggett's fear is that in attempting to make up for previous lax enforcement, the Transport Agency will become overzealous.

'Our concern is always that a regulator will start regulating things that are not relevant under the law and not vital for safety, that they overstep the mark.'

Haszard is well aware of industry jitters and says the agency will not go overboard. 

'We're not going to take enforcement action against people who have forgotten to dot their i's and cross their t's … we are talking about egregious behaviour which is significantly compromising road transport safety.

'We're going to be much tougher, but that doesn't mean we are not going to be fair, not going to listen, or not going to give people an opportunity to improve.'