NSW chain of responsibility enforcer Paul Endycott blasts contracts with late penalties.
The head of enforcement for chain of responsibility in New South Wales says he wants trucking operators to send in customer contracts that stipulate penalties for running late.
Paul Endycott is general manager of compliance operations at NSW Roads and Maritime Services (RMS).
He was speaking at the recent Australian Trucking Association’s Technical and Maintenance Conference in Melbourne.
“If there are penalties that are being applied to operators and others to induce a breach (of chain of responsibility), we’re very interested,” Endycott says.
“For the last year coming out of our speed enforcement program we’ve identified consignors and consignees that probably employ some of those practices, apply penalties, whether they’re written in a contract or whether they’re verbal.
“Whether it’s the manager in the distribution centre or not that’s actually employing these practices, it must stop.
“We all need to work together in this and when I hear of contracts – when am I going to get one of those? Beautiful evidence, but I can understand that it’s obviously going to create issues in the commercial sense…for operators that are going to get these demands placed on them.
“We need to know that this behaviour is carried on and is active because it is definitely influencing risk and it needs to be stopped.”
Endycott says his staff of about 20 chain of responsibility investigators sometimes receive contracts sent anonymously by trucking operators. He adds that boardroom minutes, decisions and “instructions that are given down the line” are also “extremely good evidence”.
He says he is “worried about the people that aren’t in the room”.
“It’s the subcontractors of the subcontractors, it’s the people that we see in the middle of the night that are speeding, that are on the gear, there’s all sorts of stuff going wrong with the truck. So they’re the sorts of people that we really need to get to.
“And where does it drive from? It drives from the top, so it’s DCs (distribution centres) back down to the driver.”
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