Do you risk a hefty fine, or look after the welfare of animals you’re transporting?
That’s a regular dilemma for livestock truck drivers, and Federated Farmers Southland president Jason Herrick says there needs to be less bureaucratic stringency and more common sense.
“There’s no autonomy and no trust given to drivers and transport companies,” Herrick says.
“The whole industry is being punished for the bottom five percent.
“The stress being put on experienced drivers will ultimately have serious fallout for us all unless there’s change.”
Federated Farmers wants to see better alignment between animal welfare requirements and Land Transport rules.
Those rules require drivers to take a rest break of at least 30 minutes after working five-and-a-half hours, and the break must be continuous rather in than two 15-minute breaks, for example.
Under the rules, loading and unloading stock is counted as work time, and a driver must not work more than 13 hours in any work day.
But Herrick says unforeseen delays can easily arise and disrupt drivers’ schedules, even with the best of planning.
“These drivers are very aware there are live animals in their trailers, and that ventilation and cooling is achieved by airflow when the truck is moving.
“On a day with temperatures in the early-20 degrees, it could get up to twice that in the crate without that cooling air.
“This is a real animal welfare risk – animals can die.”
Herrick says roadworks, heavy traffic, delays at pick-up or something else unforeseen often put a driver behind on their timeline.
“Then you end up with situations where the driver’s only 15 or 20 minutes from the processing plant, or where they planned to pull over safely and in shade, but that five-and-a-half hour rule kicks in and they have to stop for 30 minutes.
“The best thing for the animals would be for the driver to get them to their destination, not make them sit in the heat for 30 minutes.”
Electronic logbooks and driver-facing cameras means enforcement police can easily detect a breach.
Herrick says drivers have told him that officers in many districts are sticking to the letter of the rules.
“Fines can be up to $2000. Drivers are being forced to choose between looking after the animals and being able to pay their mortgage.”
Dom Kalasih, chief executive of Ara Aotearoa/Transporting NZ, joined Herrick and other Federated Farmers leaders recently to talk to Associate Agriculture Minister Andrew Hoggard, who holds the animal welfare portfolio.
“He understood the challenges. I think he’s quite supportive of some sort of pragmatic approach being applied.”
Kalasih is keen to build better awareness that transport services are heavily influenced by others in the supply chain.
“Farmers not being ready at pick-up time, issues with loading facilities, missing ear tags, the problem of on-board effluent tanks getting filled if animals haven’t been sufficiently stood off – delays like that impact the regulated work hours.
“With processing plants that have moved to ‘just in time’ operation, it can be a very small window of time for drivers.”
Is enforcement being applied more strictly now?
“Let’s say a better, more pragmatic, risk management approach could be taken,” Kalasih replies.
The rules mean, at the end of a working day, a driver only a few more kilometres from home is required to sleep in their truck cab.
An ongoing Waka Kotahi/transport companies trial of new technology could provide answers.
One tool is a phone app that provides a cognitive behaviour assessment. Once a baseline is set for the individual driver’s capability, they can check the app during their work day for an assessment of their alertness. Results can be integrated into the driver’s scheduling and journey management system.
“If a driver needs that little bit more flexibility in their work time, the transport company’s operational team can use this science to say, ‘yes, he’s still good to go’ or ‘no, he’ll need to take that mandated break’,” Kalasih says.
Another software tool uses an algorithm that takes into account circadian rhythms and total time awake to give predictive advice on rostering.
Such technology, already used overseas, is expensive.
Kalasih says Ara Aotearoa is working with Waka Kotahi “to find the right balance to manage the risk but not go whole hog and make it so damned expensive and complicated the operators aren’t going to take it up”.
While there isn’t a driver shortage right now, times are volatile and that could change pretty quickly, Kalasih says.
He agrees that the hassles could damage the livestock sector and put companies off taking some jobs.
“Drivers hearing all this background noise may think, ‘do I need all this extra stress, or should I just go and drive some other truck’?”
Federated Farmers, New Zealand’s leading independent rural advocacy organisation, has established a news and insights partnership with AgriHQ, the country’s leading rural publisher, to give the farmers of New Zealand a more informed, united and stronger voice. Federated Farmers news and commentary appears each week in its own section of the Farmers Weekly print edition and online.
