LBCA plans awareness campaign to promote the NSW livestock loading scheme.
The Livestock and Bulk Carriers Association (LBCA) is planning a year-long education campaign aimed at farmers to help grow the livestock loading scheme in New South Wales.
LBCA treasurer Graeme Hoare has set the group and its members a 12-month task to sell the benefits of the scheme, which was introduced in 2012 to allow livestock transporters with certified road-friendly suspension to operate at higher mass limits (HML).
The livestock loading scheme is in force on all state-owned roads in NSW, but it is up to individual councils if they want to sign up.
It is a boon for NSW farmers because it allows them to transport more cattle per load, but Hoare told attendees at this year’s LBCA annual conference many in the farming community do not know it exists.
Hoare is hoping an education campaign will encourage farmers to lobby their local councils to introduce it on their road networks.
“We went out and did the hard work and got it up and going for our farmers. But we need to go back out to the farmers and everyone to get them to understand the benefits of higher productivity trucks to cart livestock into the saleyards, feedlots and abattoirs,” Hoare says.
“For the next 12 months I think the LBCA has to get out and sell the message about it. We need our farmers to lobby their own shires. The state is too big for us to cover so we need everyone out there in the state to go to their own local shire, the farmers to go to their shires to get the roads open or get the roads assessed to see if we can get higher productivity trucks.”
But Hoare has indicated it will be a tough getting the farmers onside given the lack of interest they have displayed previously in working with the transport industry.
“The farmers haven’t been easy. Our relationship with the NSW farmers hasn’t been great. They don’t seem to want to do much with us but we’re doing a lot of work for them,” he says.
“Things are a lot better for them but they just don’t understand, and I think we’ve got to get out and sell the message.”
Photography: Greg Bush