Australia’s trucking industry is “hanging by a thread” due to exorbitant fuel prices, National Road Transport Association CEO Warren Clark has warned.<\/p>\n
In a survey released by the NRTA, which represents Australia\u2019s trucking industry, 75 per cent of operators said they would not survive six more months if the situation does not improve.<\/p>\n
With 182 truckies surveyed, the Association found owner-operators with small businesses have been hit the hardest and were in desperate need of government assistance.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Sky News on Wednesday, Mr Clark said it was \u201cprobably as tough as the industry has seen it\u201d, adding that the current crisis would be \u201cworse than Covid\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a little bit complex, but basically a lot of the industry runs on a fuel levy and it does get passed on. However, that’s not everyone and the time to pass it on is the concern,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously you deliver the load, you fill your truck up … you go through the day and you don’t put your bill in until the end of the month. So the whole industry is always at least a month in arrears with claiming back the rise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Clark said this process resulted in a \u201cmore precarious\u201d situation for operators as the industry tended not to get paid weekly.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur industry traditionally doesn’t get paid every week, you know, they could be getting paid 30, 60, 90, all the way out to 180 days,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t know what sort of small businesses are out there that can actually cover it, and even the large businesses would be struggling to be covering that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Clark said his organisation\u2019s survey findings were \u201cnot predictions\u201d but what members of the industry have reported.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a dire state. People are parking up their trucks now. I think it’s one in five are laying off staff now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only thing that can save it is that the fuel doesn’t fluctuate, that people continue along, that their cash flow is covered. But if they don’t, it’s pretty simple. There’ll be breaks in the freight supply chain and there will be shortages.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s nothing else, there’s no other way I can put it. And it won’t be something like through Covid, it’ll be worse than Covid because we had fuel in Covid.\u201d<\/p>\n
The transport boss said \u201ccash is king\u201d in the trucking industry and if members did not have enough money for fuel the trucks would stop.<\/p>\n
Mr Clark called on the government to fulfil a promise it made to the trucking industry regarding zero interest loans.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, the government has done quite a few things to help industry. But one of the big things now \u2026 is that we need help with cashflow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the big issues that the government promised was zero free interest loans to help people with their cash flow and to help cover their costs until they get paid.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow this has not come into place as of yet. They announced it on April 2 and seriously, we are still waiting for the details.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Clark said the trucking industry could not wait for the government\u2019s version of \u201cjust around the corner\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t know, in government worlds that might be quick, but in real world business terms we’re hanging by a thread. It needs to happen. It needs to happen this week,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s trucking industry is “hanging by a thread” due to exorbitant fuel prices, National Road Transport Association CEO…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,147,164,35431,47714,11038],"class_list":{"0":"post-609813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-covid","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-fuel","14":"tag-sky-news","15":"tag-trucking"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}