etruck.com.au

Confusion has reigned since the new fatigue rules were passed into law last year. To some, the rules just didn’t make sense and to others, neither of the two fatigue management schemes, Basic and Advanced, could solve their fatigue management problems. It has taken a relatively small group, the Livestock Transport Association of Queensland, working along with the Australian Livestock Transport Association and Queensland Transport, to come up with a relatively simple solution the regulators should have thought of in the first place.

Livestock transport, especially in Queensland, does put some unusual demands on trucks, trailers and drivers. One of the areas where most of the beef is sourced is centred in Longreach, 16 hours driving away from the place where most of the beef is eaten, Southeast Queensland. The Basic Fatigue Management rules do not have enough flexibility to get the job done without breaking the law.

Livestock operators don’t have the sort of resources required to create a fatigue management compliance team to run a custom-made Advance Fatigue Management regime. By getting together, the livestock transporters seem to have come up with a simple solution. They have designed an AFM template for all of them to use, they will gain the flexibility of AFM without the prohibitive cost of designing such a scheme.

Drivers don’t need to do these big days very often but when they do it is going to take 16 hours to get there. If they stop, the animal welfare and effluent issues associated with a longer rest period start to cause many problems.

The question we need to ask is: if it is possible for this group to develop a flexible fatigue management scheme suitable for small operators which is both safe and practical, acceptable to the government’s nominated fatigue experts and relatively simple to administer, how come the legislative and transport experts at the National Transport Commission couldn’t come up with something similar in the first place?