Common sense, is not common practice.

Today we got our first 'yellow canary' in around thirty five years of being involved with trucks. It is not so much that our trucks are always in top condition, it is more because we are off the beaten track and the authorities never find us. However, today our luck ran out and our truck just happened to attract the attention of a highway patrol car. They come over here once or twice a year and have a blitz on trucks, cockies towing augers and kids riding bikes.

Now, I don't have a problem with this, we try and keep our trucks up as best we can, but this one spends most of it's life carting rocks to our crusher, travelling nearly as much across farmer's paddocks as it does on the road and the majority of road work is gravel roads. This is harder on suspensions and the dirt chews the brake linings out much quicker, than it would on highway trucks. They picked us on a few minor things, some of which were earmarked to be fixed anyway, including the equalizer pivots on the trailer suspension, the rubbers are starting to squeeze out a bit. They also said the exhaust pipe was pointing the wrong way, it is supposed to point more to the back, rather than straight out the side, that was news to me.

What I did have a problem with, was that they made our driver unhook the fully loaded trailer, on the side of the road, just over an intersection and bring the prime mover home on it's own. He was only six kilometers from home on a minor bitumen road, where if you saw a car an hour, it would be a good day, for three kilometers, then dirt road. What did they think we were going to do with the trailer? One of my mate's driveway was only 100 meters up the road if they didn't want us to tow it home. Of course you know what we did, a couple of hours later, but why not let him bring it home initially, I would have been quite happy if they escorted him home, it was only six kilometers.

I thought the idea of checking trucks was all about road safety, then they tell us to leave a loaded trailer parked on the edge of the bitumen, just over an intersection. What would happen if someone ran into our trailer, who is at fault?
I would be interested to hear what you fellers have to say, I know you see this sort of thing all the time in the eastern states. Sometimes I wonder if the problem is with me.

My mate's driveway.



Where we had to leave it.



The yellow canary, it says the trailer can't travel on the road after 1:10 pm, that's when they pulled him over,
then it says we can take it somewhere to get it fixed, I'm not sure what with, we only have the one prime mover.



RnR.

Rocksnroses, Your right NO BL__DY SENSE in what they do now ,on the the weekend were booking people for not locking cars in Berrigan {do you know how big Berrigan is}10 car in the street maybe.
Colin

Wonder what the coppers would have done if the legs had sunk and the trailer tipped over.

Probably book you for unsafe operating procedures.

Wonder what the coppers would have done if the legs had sunk and the trailer tipped over.

Charge with no visible means of support.

Welcome to the world of truckin Mate, where have you been hiding.

I know what you are saying, Mairjimmy, a while back a couple of them came up from Adelaide and caused a hell of a stir in one of the larger towns, chatted women for leaving the grocery shopping unrestrained on the seat, all sorts of stupid stuff, there was a real uproar in the local paper, word got back to headquarters and I think they got told to pull their horns in.

Fortunately, it's summer time Cam, but it probably wouldn't have made any difference if it wasn't. If that happened they probably would have made themselves scarce real quick. One of them actually wanted us to leave the whole unit there and have it towed home. That would be wonderful, a towie would have to come two hundred kilometers to tow it six kilometers.

The world of trucking is nothing new to me Raggsie, I have been contracting for many years. Where we operate, we tend to fly under the radar and they have trouble finding us. We were dead unlucky the other day, I reckon they must have called into the local deli or the pub, for lunch, just as our truck went through. I'm not complaining about getting pinged once in thirty five years, I think we have a fair bit of credit built up, it was just the way they went about it, when they are supposed to be operating in the interests of road safety.

RnR.