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Australia will grind to a halt if we lose trucks

28 August 2025

Without trucks, Australia stops. 

It is that simple. 

Trucks, or more specifically, those skilful yet much-maligned drivers behind the wheel of them, deliver just about everything around this wide, brown land. 

Be it the vast expanses of regional Australia or bustling capital cities, much of what sustains us is brought in on the back of a truck. 

Yet despite being essential to everyday life and, indeed, the productivity of this nation, trucking is in crisis point and very few outside the transport sector know nor really care about the peril in which the industry finds itself. 

In the Federal Parliament, so little value is placed on what our terrific truckies do, the Transport Minister Catherine King has not brought herself to even mention them once in the House of Representatives this year. 

Although, to be fair, Minister King did make reference to transport once, but only in the context of the sector, without mandatory CO2 vehicle emissions standards, being “projected to become Australia’s largest source of emissions by 2030”. 

So more scare-mongering and compliance. 

In the meantime, the latest Australian Securities and Investments Commission data reveals a disturbingly sharp, upward trend within Australia’s transport, postal and warehousing sector. 

ASIC figures show 196 of these companies went to the wall in 2021-2022 (remember, Labor took over in May 2022), 347 in 2022-2023, 495 in 2023-2024 and, as of 6 April this year, 535 insolvencies had already been recorded. 

Ian Hyman, chief executive officer of Hymans Valuers and Auctioneers, hit the nail on the head when he told Big Rigs recently: “Government regulation is getting worse: industry collective bargaining, unrestrained union behaviour, abolition of employee restraint clauses and a myriad of other government-related controls create roadblocks to efficient and well-managed operations. It’s all going to make life even harder.” 

Two stark examples of just how badly trucking is faring are XL Express and Watsons. 

XL Express, with a fleet of 193 vehicles, stood down its 200 employees in late June and, in early August, creditors voted to wind up the 17 companies associated under the XL group, burdened by $41.9 million of debt. 

Don Watson Transport and Coldstores announced on 5 June it was finishing up after 77 years of delivering for Australia. 

One of the country’s leading refrigerated logistics operations, the firm began way back in 1948 when founder G H “Don” Watson served the markets with a few Army surplus K Series Austins. 

The company collapse means another 300 employees out of work and 140 trucks and 170 trailer trucks, which were annually covering 22 million kilometres, are backed up against the company fence … an all-too-often scene these days. 

One of Australia’s best known transport identities, Ron Finemore AO, is sure to have plenty to say about the parlous state of the transport sector and what can be done to help retrieve it at The Daily Telegraph’s Bush Summit at Wagga Wagga on 27 August. 

Mr Finemore has more than six decades of experience in Australian trucking, starting as a one-truck operation at tiny Mangoplah and building it to be one of the country’s foremost businesses. 

He went broke once but bounced back, underlining his shrewd business acumen and resilience. 

“Rural and regional Australia pays for freight in both directions on everything they do and it’s critical to their economy and I’s critical to their survival,” Mr Finemore says. 

“And the key thing for me is that trucking is very, very important.  

“There are now changes of generations and there’s changes of costs of doing business and that’s causing people either to give it away or to be forced to give it away because they’re not viable.” 

Mr Finemore attributes the hardships confronting the transport sector to a combination of factors including increasing costs of equipment over the years, trailer costs, compliance as well as a desperate shortage of drivers. 

“It’s the cost of doing business in Australia that’s the problem,” he argues. 

“Now, in certain parts of our business, we’re just walking away from it; the other parts of our business, we’re trying to get the rates we need to do the business.  

He also took a swipe at bureaucracy, saying: “We’ve had this National Heavy Vehicle Regulator review going on for six years and nothing’s happened because we just keep ending up with whatever State has the lowest common denominator and they don’t even send decent bureaucrats who understand what they’re talking about. So, you’re getting nowhere with those sorts of things.” 

The Albanese Labor Government has a lot to answer for when it comes to its approach to trucking. 

It has imposed a truckies’ tax – with an additional 6 per cent on the Road User Charge and registration fees, each year, for three years to July 2026. 

At the same time, EV vehicles have escaped petrol taxes that help fund upgrades to the roads for which truckies are paying through the nose to maintain. 

Labor has overseen high energy costs and inputs and slashed regional road and infrastructure funding. This is placing such an impost on transport companies. 

Little wonder, long-time transport operators such as Peter Rodney are beyond frustration. 

Rodney’s Transport Service, a family-owned business operating out of Wagga Wagga, Sydney and Melbourne, at its peak 10 years ago had 138 prime movers. 

It has downsized considerably since those heady days and straight-shooter Mr Rodney does not hide his disappointment at how things have unfolded. 

“I can see this country stopping unless someone in these government departments don’t get off and get people back to work or stop giving people money and get them to go to work to get their money,” he fumes. 

“I’ll make a prediction: over the next 10 years transport will be one third of what it is today. 

“And they just don’t come to work or they apply for things and they just don’t turn up. 

“They’re filling out paperwork, so they can say: ‘Oh, we can go back to the Government, we’ll just get more money sitting around and doing nothing’.” 

As I told Parliament just the other day, that sounds rather cynical, but, unfortunately, it’s the truth. 

Mr Finemore’s assessments at the Wagga summit should be enlightening. Let’s hope the Federal Transport Minister hears what he has to say … and acts accordingly. 

Opinion piece first appeared in The Daily Telegraph, Tuesday 26 August 2025

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