In the last few years thate has been a bit of a shake up in the transport industry, lots of things are becomming tighter regulated along with a push for national standardisation.
The two most significant changes have been the load rerstraint requirements, and chain of responsibility legeslation.
In 2004 the National Transport Commission, published the current version of "guidelines and performance standards for the safe carrage of loads on road vehicles" AKA "Load Restraint Guide".
These standards now apply to all road transport including private passenger vehicles.
The majority of truckies embrace the new rules, because they have been
well researched, tested and experessed...but there are still some who mumble and think they know better.
The important thing for member of this
forum to understand is thay all to all of us.
The book is available on line free...google "load rerstraint guide" and you will find it easy enough...it is also available in hard coppy for arroud $12.
This is why we are now finding even the cheapest nastiest ractchet tie down for sale have specification tags attached.
Load restraint is easy enough dealt with, read the book and do as it says ..all good.
Chain of responsibility is another thing alltogether...and this also applies to all of us.
More or less, regarding any transport matter, if you knew about ut or should have known about it and you either permitted it or did not prevent it...AND it went wrong or someone was caught.....you can be held responsible.
Tis is why many landscaping yards and hardwares will not just let you
rock up with ya ute or trailer and drag stuff away.
many will only load small amounts of material into trailers and utes, or will not allow you out the
gate or even start to load you if you can not show equipment and ability to restrain the load to standard.
The text book example that is currently offered is that of a major earth moving company who consigned a doser blade to be transported to a site in NT.
The first truckie turned up and refused the load, because he thaught the pallet was inadequite and drove off, the second truckie loaded it, tied it down and was on his way........on a major highway in NT, the blade came free and cleaned up a passing pasenger vehice killing the occupants.
Under the current Chain of responsibility laws, everybody involved in the sag can be prosecuted and held responsible both companies and individuals.
SO the company that consigned the load, the bloke who ordered it shipped in an unfit state, the fork driver who loaded it, the truck driver carrying it, the company that owned the truck, the agent that booked the job and so
forth, can all have their asses kicked and or end up broke and in jail.
Now the other day I was driving along and I saw a slide on camper tied down on a pretty new 70 series ute...they had used quick release shackles and what looked like hardware
shop turnbuckles to tie this thing down.
I guarantee that this would not have complied with load restraint guidlines and under any sort of real stress the thing would have come off the back.
NOW...how far does the chain of responsibility go here?
I was going to catch him up...but he was gone in traffic..and would he have listened....yeh maybe.
cheers