Two years ago, the New Zealand Trucking Association launched the HARMfree Transport & Logistics Program to lift health, safety, and wellbeing standards across the sector. After a year of development, collaboration, and peer review, the program went live, and it has since become one of the most practical and accessible resources available to operators. HARMfree is offered entirely free of charge and demonstrates that when resources are clear, relevant, and practical, operators not only pay attention, but they take meaningful action.

Since 2017, the small team at the New Zealand Trucking Association (NTA) has been taking its flagship Road Safety Truck to schools, training organisations, and community events nationwide with the goal of sharing simple and practical tips on how to share the road safely with heavy vehicles.

Transport Minister Chris Bishop recently announced Cabinet has agreed to a series of legislative changes to enable the transition of New Zealand’s 3.5 million light vehicles to paying for our roading network through electronic road user charges, rather than petrol tax.

“The abolition of petrol tax, and the move towards all vehicles (whether they be petrol, diesel, electric or hybrid) paying for roads based on distance and weight, is the biggest change to how we fund our roading network in 50 years,” Bishop says.

As we all know, trucks are big, heavy and take up a more room that light vehicles on the highway . Being around them can challege even the best light vehicle drivers as they are are often less familiar with large vehicles and this can lead to serious unintended consequences. To help combat this deficiancy of kowledge around trucks, the NZ Trucking Association is introducing a new initiative called the “Don’t Muck with a Truck”, a road safety programme (free educational resource) designed to help create safer roads for everyone.

A major step forward in heavy vehicle safety and professionalism has arrived with the official launch of TruckSafe New Zealand, a Safety Management System (SMS) designed to lift standards across the entire transport and logistics sector.