Seems Truckies are very upset at the speed with which the Government introduced the new Road User Charge increases. Mind you, it would be great if Truckies pay their fair share of the damage done to our roads. However ultimately you and me (average joe and joess) will pay for the increased charges by the pass through of these costs to the price of goods anyway.

Cheers

^^ Unless the freight companies find it better to move their goods by ship or rail

A company Im associated with tried the "lets rail it " thing, they had consignments railed to their Palmerston North Facility from various locations and it was calculated that over 75% of the consignments were A/Late, B/Damaged, C/items missing or ... in a couple cases were never seen again.

One shipment was overshot enroute from Auckland to Palmerston North and was found later to be sitting in a lower south island siding and their excuse was >>>>>> " It overshot the dropoff point, arrived at the south island location and because it wasnt theirs they sidelined it until someone enquired about it"

This resulted in the said BIG company wiping the rail option for the road transport option where the goods can be uplifted in Auckland in the afternoon and waiting at the gate at 5am next morning in Palmerston North with no delays, no damages and cheeper freight costs.
RAIL is letting itself down, with the electric rail system and sheer volume per unit they can move, they should be able to very much undercut the costs of road freight but they dont.... I was told by a rail worker that rail only wants the "wagon loads and bulk (eg containers)" and not all that fiddly general freight that they used to carry in its hayday.

And while you general public look at trashing road transport .... think about the big floods a few years ago .... the RAIL NETWORK got washed out, many main highways were also washed out but did you still find you could go to the garages and get fuel, the supermarkets and shops and get the goods you wanted?? It was the trucking industry that pulled ranks and kept NZ running. And who was it that supplied FREE TRANSPORT to evacuate thousands of head of stock to safer locations?
I know of one Palmerston north supermarket chain that, to get goods from Palmerston North to Wanganui they went via TeKuiti and New Plymouth and put in enormouse extra hours and cost to get YOU the PUBLIC the services you needed, and also to all other areas of the lower north island the rigs were diverting via little backroads and getting ways of getting the goods to the required destinations.

I recon they need thanking and commending .... not the bullshit that the (regulatory) CVIU and the general public dishes out !!!!!

The new RUCs only apply to trucks and not to their trailers, and the increases are totally unrelated to the amount of road damage they do.
The increases are roughly what would be expected if they are intended to recover the costs of reducing urban congestion, based on the urban/rural operating mix for various sizes of trucks, essentially bring heavy vehicle RUCs into line with the increases in light vehicle RUCs since 1998.
The 1998 schedule of charges were very straight forward:
Petrol tax = $12.60 per 1,000 km (assuming 10.5 km/100litres)
2 ton RUC = $18.46
Both these charges include approx 40cents for road damage, the rest essentially covers capital investment and depreciation due to ageing of pavements and bridges. This breakdown is derived from road fund annual financial statements for the last 50 years.
The $18.00 is included in the RUCs for both trucks and trailers, presumably to account for capital improvements due to the length of truck/trailer combinations.
Subtracting this $18.00 from the schedule of charges reveals that the road damage component increases with the 3rd power of the increase in axle weight for single axle, 2.9 power for tandem, and 2.8 power for tridem.
Real spending on maintenance has not increased in 20 years hence the the lack of any increase in RUCs in that time. However the proportion of heavy vehicles fitted with road friendly suspension has increased immensely in that time which suggests that these trucks are subsidising trucks fitted with old fashioned steel springs rather than there being a subsidy from cars to trucks.