RIVERSTONE-BASED trucking company Roadmaster Pty Ltd opened its doors last week to celebrate Truck Week.

 It and dozens of companies around the country used the week to spread a message of driver safety.

 A Roadmaster representative said that common accidents were caused by cars trying to overtake turning trucks, cars overtaking trucks when approaching traffic lights and then coming to an immediate stop a short distance in front of trucks.

 Motorists should know that long heavy trucks require a greater amount of room to turn and a substantial length of roadway to come to a complete stop,'' he said.Riverstone MP John Aquilina, who attended a Roadmaster open day, said he had spoken with several truck drivers of their frustrations.Unfortunatel y whenever a truck is involved in an incident, it inevitably causes serious injury or death,'' he said.

 Each day nine trips start from Riverstone Roadmaster to major outlets around Australia, often completing the journey in a four-day loop. As well as the trucks leaving, an equal number of trucks are arriving to take on new loads.

 Roadmaster employs around 220 personnel and is one of the four major refrigerated truck freight companies in Australia.''

 Australian Trucking Association chairman, Trevor Martyn, said the week was a great opportunity for the industry to show politicians and the community how important trucking was to Australia.``The trucking industry carries three quarters of Australia's domestic freight, including every item on the shelves of every supermarket,'' Mr Martyn said.

Source: Blacktownsun

Crews took about 14 hours to clean up the scene of a truck rollover on the Mallee Highway in north-west Victoria over the weekend.

Police say the B-double truck was carrying frozen meat and vegetables when it overturned on S-bends near Murrayville on Sunday afternoon.

Heavy rain hampered the clean-up by Victorian and South Australian fire crews, police, State Emergency Service and council crews.

The truck driver was flown to an Adelaide hospital and is in a satisfactory condition.

Source: ABC Western Victoria

Lindsay Fox's company had its best year ever and helped raise the Australian's worth to $1.5 billion.
 

The global economic downturn was bad news for most businesses but not for the one belonging to Australian trucking billionaire Lindsay Fox. Suntanned after a Christmas break at his $20 million beach house in Portsea, near Melbourne, Fox responded bluntly to questions about tough times: "No, no, no. It's the best year in the history of the company. Most of our business is FMCG [fast-moving consumer goods], food and beverages, plus we do a lot in the mining sector. Everyone's eating more at home, everyone's drinking, and everybody who's a miner is digging."

The downturn boosted demand for chocolate, ice cream, biscuits and beverages, items that his 5,000 red-and-yellow trucks deliver. (Signs on the backs of all trucks read: "You are now passing another Fox.") Alcohol sales were up 5.9% in Australia last year, good news again for Fox, whose privately held Linfox says it carts a bit more than half of the country's booze. It also moves 5.4 billion liters (1.4 billion gallons) of gas, $51 billion worth of retail products and a million tons of timber a year.

Fox, 72, who dropped out of school at age 16 and bought a secondhand truck, is now worth $1.5 billion, $500 million more than a year ago and enough to rank No. 10 among Australia's 40 Richest. Linfox, which also owns Melbourne's second- and third-biggest airports as well as the Armaguard cash-transport business, has $3 billion in sales, up from less than $2 billion in fiscal 2007. Net profits, which the company does not disclose, are conservatively estimated to be $100 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009. Linfox does claim that ebit, ebitda and free cash were all up about 20% in the past year.

Its biggest division, Linfox Logistics, which includes the trucking, has picked up three smaller logistics firms in the past four years, boosting revenues from $1.2 billion to $2.2 billion. That is still less than half that of Australia's biggest logistics group, Toll Holdings, which got its start in 1888. But Fox has bragging rights: He is worth more than twice as much as Toll's managing director, Paul Little, who is part of a buyout team that took over the company in 1986 and is No. 29 among Australia's 40 Richest.

With just under $500 million in sales in nine countries outside of Australia and New Zealand, Linfox is particularly focusing on a few key markets. "China, India, Thailand and Indonesia are the four exciting countries for us," says Michael Byrne, the self-described "hired help," who has been chief executive of Linfox Logistics for almost four years. Linfox is already quite big in Thailand, where the company has 2,000 staff and 500 tractor-trailers carting groceries for British supermarket giant Tesco ( TESO - news - people ). In India large customers include Tata and Unilever. The logistics business has had a foothold in China for over a decade, including at a couple of inland sites away from Shanghai and Beijing. At the next board meeting in April a key topic will be Asian acquisitions. "We could spend $250 million without too much difficulty," says Byrne.

One way Linfox hopes to distinguish itself in other parts of Asia is by playing up the firm's safety measures. "In many Asian countries, the law as written is not complied with," Byrne says, noting that two big problems are dangerously long driving hours and overloading. Linfox, he says, applies exactly the same stringent safety standards to its truck fleets in each country. Where rules are not as strictly enforced, notably Vietnam and Indonesia, the company runs warehousing operations but no trucking business.

Fox has for several years been running a safety campaign to reduce truck accidents. He's bent the ear of many an Australian government minister and now, as a member of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation's (APEC) business advisory council, he's taking the campaign to the rest of Asia. At the council's February meeting, in Melbourne, Fox dragged the 22 APEC reps to his truck-testing complex two hours west of Melbourne to show them the "black box" GPS monitoring system he proposes, which records driver distances, rest breaks, speed and even gear changes.

Of course, tougher safety enforcement will benefit a sophisticated company like Linfox, which can afford to spend $2,200 on each GPS system. It is putting them in more than a thousand of its Australian trucks this year. The safety issue seems to have become an obsession: Visitors to the logistics division's shiny new headquarters at an industrial park near Essendon Airport are required to read the rules for climbing stairs, which include instructions to concentrate, hold the handrail and use the elevator if you're wearing heels. There's even a photo of a particularly nasty staircase that caused three tumbles last year.

Fox says his APEC responsibilities and safety campaign take up a fair bit of time. He handed the executive chairmanship of the Linfox group to his eldest son, Peter, 15 years ago. Another son, Andrew, runs the property division and his third son, David, the airports. Daughter Katrina is involved in publicity. His role? "Senior citizen," he quips.

Source: Forbes

PHOENIX — The people of Arizona kept their upper lips stiff when officials mortgaged off the state’s executive office tower and a “Daily Show” crew rolled into town to chronicle the transaction in mocking tones. They remained calm as lawmakers pondered privatizing death row.

But then the state took away their toilets, and residents began to revolt.

“Why don’t they charge a quarter or something?’” said Connie Lucas, who lives in Pine, Ariz., about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from here. “There was one rest stop between here and Phoenix, and we really needed it.”

Arizona has the largest budget gap in the country when measured as a percentage of its overall budget, and the state Department of Transportation was $100 million in the red last fall when it decided to close 13 of the state’s 18 highway rest stops.

But the move has unleashed a torrent of telephone calls and e-mail messages to state lawmakers, newspapers and the Department of Transportation deploring the lost toilets — one of the scores of small indignities among larger hardships that residents of embattled states face as governments scramble to shore up their finances.

“People in this state are mad about this,” said State Representative Daniel Patterson, a Democrat from Tucson who has sponsored a bill that would allow other entities to reopen and maintain the rest stops. “This bill may have the broadest support among members of any bill this year.”

Some residents see something sinister in the closings. Betty L. Roberts, who lives in Sun City, west of Phoenix, said the topic was a hot one among her friends.

“I honestly think they are setting us up because they want to do a tax increase,” Ms. Roberts said. “I think by shutting down things people want, they will give us one.”

Arizona is not alone in singling out toilets. Colorado, Georgia, Vermont and Virginia are among states that have also closed rest stops, though Virginia’s new governor, Robert F. McDonnell, has vowed to reopen 19 stops that closed last year.

“It’s a safety problem, not only for us but car drivers,” said Clayton Boyce, the spokesman for the American Trucking Association, which has fought rest stop closings in Virginia and elsewhere. “We think it is a pretty bad idea.”

The Arizona Transportation Department has suffered an ever-ugly combination of large cuts and unforeseen costs. More than $500 million of the transportation budget was recently diverted to the state’s general fund — a common move among struggling states — and the department has closed 12 field offices, deferred $370 million in highway construction projects and cut 10 percent of its staff.

Further, two winter storms recently battered the north of the state, at a cost of roughly $4 million to the department. The roughly $300,000 a year it cost to operate each rest stop was something the department decided it could no longer manage.

“People think, ‘You just go in and change the toilet paper, don’t you?’ ” said Kevin Biesty, the government relations director for the Transportation Department. “The answer is, no, we have to maintain the water quality, we have do maintenance to the buildings and so on. Some of those places in the middle of nowhere are like their own little cities.”

Mr. Patterson’s bill, which is supported by a majority of legislators, Republicans and Democrats, would allow local governments, American Indian tribes and private groups to pay to keep the rest stops open.

The problem is that most localities in the state are broke, too. Further, federal law prohibits states (including Arizona) with Interstates built after 1956 from privatizing or commercializing their rest areas. “This bill doesn’t really give us any new tools,” Mr. Biesty said.

Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, wrote to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood last month asking that the restriction be rescinded to allow the state more flexibility.

One of the newly closed rest stops is on U.S. 60 near Wickenburg, a little town about 50 miles northwest of here. The stop had served as a bit of a recreation area, too, with picnic tables and educational information about the nearby Hassayampa River, and the life of bats.

“That place was well used,” Bonnie Chapman, a waitress at the Golden Nugget, one of the few restaurants on Wickenburg’s main drag, said of the rest stop. “Locals even used it for picnics.”

The Golden Nugget, not coincidentally, is now a place that sees a few more visitors needing something other than coffee each day.

“It’s a long way to Phoenix from here,” Ms. Chapman said.

Source: The New York Times