Well, I walk to work, so your protest is meaningless to me. But that said, I really don’t give a shit about your economic woes. Frankly you bunch of road-hogging, dangerous driving idiots can take your trucks and down-scale to a less fuel-consuming, road-destroying, air-polluting, noise-generating occupation as soon as possible.
If tomorrow one kid doesn’t get his MacDonalds burger patties shipped all the way from some South Auckland factory to Manners Mall, then so be it… You’re probably doing us all a favour.
And if all you’re doing is pissing off the people you actually want to support you, then you’re likely to succeed. Catch up with the C21st boys, your long-haul trucks are obsolete.
Damned luddites…
3 July, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Che, for a public servant that attitude frightens me a bit. I defy you, in all seriousness, to spend one day without using or consuming objects that have been transported by truck. Your inner-city lifestyle is totally dependent on stuff coming to you. Without a steady stream of trucks, you’d be hungry in a week.
Truckers may be dicks at times, but in this case they’re caught at the thin end of the economic wedge, with fixed contracts that no longer add up.
3 July, 2008 at 7:18 pm
weeeellll… this isn’t about my job, this is about the environmental sustainability of trucking stuff halfway across the country.
as i understand whatever the fees, the further you drive, the more it costs. in other words, it’s user pays.
so, driving burger patties from south auckland is incredibly inefficient, but has been regarded as affordable up until now because oil is cheap. but it’s not actually affordable if you make truckies pay for the costs they routinely transfer out to non-road users like me.
the outcome of these fees, and higher oil prices, will probably be that those burger patties are made by local people, and freighted a lot less of a distance. which is a win-win as far as i can see. more jobs for locals, lower costs.
long-haul truckers are literally, not metaphorically, luddites.
3 July, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Truckers truly are whingers.
They haven’t had the RUC rise since 1990, and they are charged by the axle rather than weight. This last point is important because road wear increases logarithmically rather than linearly – “the equivalence factor for an axle rises very steeply with its load—roughly as its third power”. A 40 tonne truck causes 1000 times more damage than a 2 tonne car.
Looking at only road maintenance,they are being heavily subsidised by other road users. And they have the insolence to complain when their charges go up, by only 10%, for the first time in almost 20 years? Looking at externalities, the picture is even worse.
Whingers.
3 July, 2008 at 8:48 pm
How does produce get to the farmers market? Carrier pigeon? Tardis? Carbon Neutral Fairy?
George, the RUC was last raised in 2007, when Annette King’s office promised to close a loophole that allowed a massive pre-purchase of RUC charges, and give reasonable notice of any more increases. The truckers’ gripe is not so much the rise, but the way it was done. King’s office mislead them.
I know a crapload of people who went off Labour when they put tobacco up almost $2 one night without warning. Same same but different.
3 July, 2008 at 9:22 pm
i love trains
trains rock,
since truckers spend more times on the road than me therefore wearing up roads faster than me, hell yes they should pay more in road user changes.
Also if you create environmental harm through your business, wake up and smell the roses, it’s no longer ok, so take the chance to diversify now.
4 July, 2008 at 8:11 am
I’m a swing voter on this issue.
The truckers get slapped with the RUC, which is fine (apparently it’s implementation was poor, but the idea is fine by me). These costs will, undoubtedly, be passed onto the consumer.
As for it somehow being the truckers fault that their business is environmentally unfriendly, or being luddites, I just don’t get it.
As far as I know there isn’t any better technology out there to transport large quantities of goods from A to B. Trains can do the long haul stuff, but then something has to get them from the train station. And remember food is only one thing that’s transported. I imagine fuel prices will have to get really huge before it’s more profitable to set up a new factory (and workers) in another centre rather than transport goods.
4 July, 2008 at 8:25 am
yeah, i think i’ve mentioned long-haul trucks at least twice now.
that said, you and i pay no matter what. we either pay directly via increased prices on good transported a long distance, or we pay indirectly via taxes.
personally i’d rather exercise choice. if you’re shipping widgets all over the country and driving up my prices, i’ll not buy your goods.
4 July, 2008 at 10:19 am
you’re talking rather fiercely about peoples’ livelihoods there Che. Yes trains should be doing more of the long haulage but that’s nothing to do with individual drivers.
come on, it’s not just fast food that gets transported, organic garlic doesn’t fly – although with GM it might, but then it wouldn’t be organic.
4 July, 2008 at 10:48 am
yeah, i’m not advocating getting rid of these jobs. i am saying that their costs shouldn’t be covered by the taxpayer. i.e. –>me.
if it’s uneconomic to freight garlic from northland to wellington with these road-user charges, then why should we have no charges and have you and i subsidising it?
some things are best paid for with economies of scale. education and health for example. roading is another example. but why should the latter be paid for out of my pocket?
4 July, 2008 at 10:49 am
Absolutely long distance ought not to be done by trucks.
Are our figures at all like these?
Q: Can a freight train really move a ton of freight 436 miles on a gallon of fuel?
A: Yes, and some do even better. The figure used in the rail industry’s advertising is a national average.
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/can_a_freight_train_really_move_a.html
4 July, 2008 at 12:03 pm
I wandered down to Queen St – about the only traffic was the trucks, so they were just slowing each other down. I didn’t get the feeling that there was much hostility towards the truckers, but maybe things were different on the motorways, it seemed to amuse more – apart from the loud horns.
i woke up expecting to be seriously annoyed by the whole thing since I had to run my partner out to the airport, but we didn’t suffer any delays. So having not been inconvenienced it seemed like a bit of an adventure.
not sure if I agree with their cause but on the other hand I generally agree with workers taking direct action. But I have some sympathy with how these massive fuel prices are affecting people. I wouldn’t want to be involved in any aspect of the transport industry at present.