Stan Semenoff Logging appeals $500k bill for 'overweight' logging trucks

Tuesday, 10 December 2019

Stan Semenoff Logging has asked the High Court in Auckland to reduce a $532,878 bill imposed by New Zealand Transport Agency after it was caught overloading its trucks.

The Northland transport company is trying to overturn a District Court judgement which found NZTA had correctly calculated the road user charges (RUCs) it should have paid for its trucks to carry heavy loads of logs from commercial forests to port.

At the High Court in Auckland on Tuesday, the company's lawyer David Neutze argued NZTA had used an inappropriate method of calculating the RUCs for overweight vehicles.

Stan Semenoff Logging's (SSL), which believed a fair bill would be just under $200,000, did not deny many of its trucks had run overweight.

But Neutze said weighing loads in forest settings was hard, and SSL should have been given more tolerance for loads to be over, or under, by up to 20 per cent.

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Stan Semenoff, the majority owner of Stan Semenoff Logging, is a two-time mayor of Whangarei.

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The logging company also had not been given enough credit for the proportion of each logging truck journey that was not on public roads, but on private forest roads.

Robin McCoubrey, representing NZTA, said the methodology used to calculate the RUCs was appropriate, and may even have underestimated the amount SSL should have paid.

He also dismissed the argument that credit should be given for overs and unders within 20 per cent of the maximum load, saying far more SSL trucks had run overweight than underweight.

In March Shane Jones raised action being taken by the New Zealand Transport Authority against Stan Semenoff Logging with the regulator's chief executive. That brought a challenge from National's Paul Goldsmith who said it was inappropriate for Jones to have sought information about the case.

'There aren't many that are 20 per cent underweight,' McCoubrey said.

He said almost 70 per cent of 17,200 loads assessed in an NZTA investigation beginning in 2016 were overweight. The onus was on SSL to ensure it paid the correct RUCs, he said.

RUC's were set to reflect the 'cost' on the roading system of heavy vehicles.

NZTA began the investigation 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.

SSL challenged the NZTA assessment earlier this year, but District Court Judge Gary Harrison approved the agency's RUC calculations, which were based on what a 'compliant operator' in the same circumstances would have paid.

High Court judge Christine Gordon reserved her decision on SSL's appeal against Harrison's decision.

SSL and NZTA are locked in another legal tussle, with SSL taking a judicial review of NZTA's decision in March to revoke SSL's transport service licence over 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.

Because SSL was so important to Northland's economy, carrying around half of all logs from Northland forests to Northport for export, Cabinet was briefed in August last year about NZTA's investigation into SSL.

The briefing was followed by the publication to SSL of an audit report from 2017, which noted SSL vehicles' 116 traffic offences between July 1, 2015 to July 18, 2018, as well as 158 alleged log book infringements by drivers.

Between July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2017, SSL vehicles failed 142 roadside inspections, and 73 police infringements were incurred.

In seeking leave to take a judicial review, SSL said it had never had an injury accident on the road, any fatigue-related incidents among its drivers, and had a good Operator Safety Rating (OSR), which indicated a good level of compliance with the law.

Stan Semenoff, the majority owner of SSL, is a two-time mayor of Whangarei.