Northland transport company fights $500k bill after overloading its trucks

Tuesday, 19 November 2019

Major Northland transport operator Stan Semenoff Logging is challenging the way its road user charges were calculated.

Stan Semenoff Logging is fighting a $532,878 road user charges bill after it was caught overloading its trucks.

The Northland transport company SSL is seeking to overturn a District Court judgement dismissing its appeal over the charges which are due for payment by January 10 and the case is set down for hearing in the High Court next month.

The company claimed it owed only $135,365, despite evidence from the NZ Transport Agency that almost 70 per cent of 17,200 loads assessed were overweight.

The agency began an investigation in 2016 after police raised concerns about the number of overweight infringement offences being committed by SSL, and that led to an specialist assessor combing through 17 boxes of files covering a 10 month period.

A District Court judge said fines for overweight trucks should not be taken into account when assessing road user charges owed by Stan Semenoff Logging.

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District Court Judge Gary Harrison rejected SSL's calculation that the road user charges (RUC) should be determined by the cost difference between the weight licensed for and the actual weight of the individual trips.

In his judgement he said the agency was right in basing the RUC on what a compliant operator in the same circumstances would have paid.

It would be unfair if SSL was treated differently, '11,690 cases of operating at an excessive weight is a clear indication of the inappropriateness of the method of calculation advanced on behalf of SSL.'

The judge also dismissed the company's suggestion that fines paid for overweight vehicles should be taken into account in arriving at the road user charges.

Road Transport Forum chief executive Nick Leggett said there other instances of RUC assessments 'in the vicinity' of those faced by SSL, but the sum was still unusually high.

'Half a million dollars in unpaid taxes is high in anybody's book, it's pretty mindboggling.'

The transport agency told Stuff it was strengthening its approach to non-compliance, including non-payment of RUC, and when deciding the fit and proper status of a licence holder, RUC arrears were taken into account along with a poor traffic history.

Back in March the agency moved to revoke SSL's transport service licence over long standing safety concerns relating to driver fatigue and behaviour, breaches of work time and rest time rules, problems with logbooks, and the long list of traffic offences.

The company appealed the licence revocation and was allowed to continue operating, providing it met certain conditions, until the case is heard in the District Court.