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[jules]

in a free market economy, anyone is free to negotiate prices on anything - other than if you've previously signed a contract specifying price.

what you mean is, the consignor won't budge on price. again, a feature of any low barrier to entry industry is high competition.

try telling a lawyer (an industry where competition is low) you'll only pay him $15 an hour and you won't budge on price. he'll laugh and walk away. and so will any other lawyer you ask.

sadly for truckers, there are too many desperate other truckers who will accept the low pay. that spoils it for everyone. it's not fuel prices that are the problem.

 

[FusionX]

sadly for truckers, there are too many desperate other truckers who will accept the low pay. that spoils it for everyone. it's not fuel prices that are the problem.

Agreed in part, but fuel prices have increased this problem, as in the last 6 months, the average fuel bill for a semi has gone up around $2000 per month. While rates need to go up to help out, as you said, its the people working for little money/undercut others that **** it all up.

 

[Immortality]

Isnt their frustration more to do with the world price of oil? which the government really cant do much about?

Really, the truckies need to grow some brains rather than extra balls! Really is a problem when such simpletons are allowed to drive these dangerous and large rigs causing public havoc.

Why dont they simply put their prices up. People wont pay to get things delivered by truck? really, what are they going to eat and buy?
But where will public they get the extra cash to pay? wont the extra fuel taxes/charges reduce costs/taxes in other areas eventually finding more money in people's pockets to help absorb some of the impact, but in reality the world price of oil going up is not a cost that can be subsidised or hidden from....we are all affected.

i think you missed the point of my original post. the truckies are complaining about the government drastically increasing the price of road use charges. this is a extra cost on top of the cost of diesel. i don't know how it works in aussie but here when you run a petrol powered vehicle your road use charges are incorperated into the cost of petrol. diesel vehicles on the other hand purchase diesel and then have to purchase extra RUC (road user charges) on top of that from the government. the large the vehicle to greater the charge per km (and you have to purchase in advance). the government annouced the increase on tuesday and enforced em on wednesday.

diesel prices in NZ have increased atleast 30% more then petrol. one trucking company owner with a fleet of 25 vehicles says his costs from this increase is over the 100k mark (p/a) so it's not a little increase. the real problem here is that the government has been it talks with the heavy road users forum for some time and have just sprung this increase on em. when the ministers own modeling shows that heavy vehicles already pay more then there fair share of roading costs.

there has been overwhelming support for the truckies today from the general public.

at the end of the day almost every product you purchase is delivered by some sort of heavy vehicle so the consumer will end up paying for this increase. this is possibly the reason why the general public is behind this protest. this is also the fist time in recent NZ history that amajor group like this has protested in such a manner with there dislike of government policy. it's good to see the people standing up to be counted instead of bending over and taking it from the government as usual.

politicians rated as the 2nd least favourable people in a recent survey, are you a politician commsirac?

 

[commsirac]

i think you missed the point of my original post. the truckies are complaining about the government drastically increasing the price of road use charges. this is a extra cost on top of the cost of diesel. i don't know how it works in aussie but here when you run a petrol powered vehicle your road use charges are incorperated into the cost of petrol. diesel vehicles on the other hand purchase diesel and then have to purchase extra RUC (road user charges) on top of that from the government. the large the vehicle to greater the charge per km (and you have to purchase in advance). ?

No, I took in the point about the road usage charges.
Seems a good system to me, trucks should be billed on the road usage as well rather than just linking that to diesel, as not all diesel users cause road damage. You have reports that they are already paying their fair share, I seriously doubt whether that is the case.

How so?

As most people know the cost of making a road and damage that occurs to road varies exponentially with the axle loads of the vehicles using them.
The relationship is basically a fourth power one. Double the axle load and the potential damage to the road increases by 2^4 = 16.
Basically your 40 tonne truck with 5 axles, 8tonne/axle does 13000 times more damage to the road surface than a car at 0.75tonnes/axle.(if you can believe the maths)
Basically road damage on roads that dont see trucks is rare.

Heavy vehicles should be paying exponentially more, atm, they are not as the fuel use doesnt vary exponentially with load, in fact trucks become more efficient as the size of the truck increases. (efficiency in this case: measured in fuel used/tonne).
The costs also vary exponentially with constructing new roads, bridges etc.

Whether the plight of the truckie is given sympathy by the public means nothing. Are they aware of the real cost of the trucks?
Sure the consumer ends up paying for the increase, but where does it go, down some government toilet? No, it goes back into the government money pool to be redistributed as it sees fit. Instead of the large cost of maintaining roads being financed by everyone out of their paye tax, it comes from the actual users, consequently there have to be some measures in which the government can cut costs to the public......I think I mentioned this all b4, perhaps go and read my first post in the thread again. Putting the costs where it occurs will encourage much better new systems of operation, perhaps more freight will be diverted to rail, perhaps people will buy more locally etc, rather than every tax payer in the country subsidising trucking madness.

 

[minux]

Basically road damage on roads that dont see trucks is rare.

Wow, can you show me examples of this, the last design engineer I spoke with wished it was only heavy vehicles using roads as then there would be less road damage.

Quite obvious you haven't driven on some of the best roads in Australia...the ones that see very few cars.

 

[commsirac]

Wow, can you show me examples of this, the last design engineer I spoke with wished it was only heavy vehicles using roads as then there would be less road damage.
.

Yes, the road I live on. Doesnt allow trucks, road surface is 50 years old and doing fine. This is perhaps an exception, even without any traffic, a road can develop cracks etc just due to earth movement.

Perhaps you given the name of the engineer who openly contradicts every engineering findings that have been confirmed the world over.

Havent driven on the best roads in Australia?
What, you associate huge freeways that have trucks and no road damage as an exception?
The reason the new freeways dont show the damage is because they have been built to tolerate it.......at a cost that is exponentially higher than if the road was for cars only.

 

[Shounak]

in a free market economy, anyone is free to negotiate prices on anything - other than if you've previously signed a contract specifying price.

what you mean is, the consignor won't budge on price. again, a feature of any low barrier to entry industry is high competition.

try telling a lawyer (an industry where competition is low) you'll only pay him $15 an hour and you won't budge on price. he'll laugh and walk away. and so will any other lawyer you ask.

sadly for truckers, there are too many desperate other truckers who will accept the low pay. that spoils it for everyone. it's not fuel prices that are the problem.

I never thought I'd find another economic rationalist on the forum like me. If only all people adopted economic thinking, the world would be a better place. Or at least more efficient.

Good points made :thumbsup:

Btw, the reason truckies get paid so lowly is that people are willing to do it so cheap. It's not uncommon for drivers to make $14-ish an hour, they'd make that in a supermarket.

Unlike the lawyer who needs years of training, wit and more training, the truck driver simply needs to pay $700 to a licensing company and he's a fully qualified driver. The market will pretty much always pay how much a person deserves to be paid.

The cost of petrol is the cost of doing business. These truckies are idiots who should go do something useful, rather than sit around causing mayhem.

 

[jules]

Basically your 40 tonne truck with 5 axles, 8tonne/axle does 13000 times more damage to the road surface than a car at 0.75tonnes/axle.(if you can believe the maths)
Basically road damage on roads that dont see trucks is rare.

your post is pretty accurate, based on my simple understanding of the science. but i've also been told that arguably the bigger issue is overloading. although a 40 tonne truck does much more damage to the road than a car, it's the cowboy running at 50 tonnes who's really tearing it up (due to the 4th power law you mentioned). and when he drives over a bridge, in effect the entire population gets their wallets out to pay.

it's a bit like vandalism on public transport. tickets may cost $5. but they should really cost $3 for honest commuters, and $100,000 for the little pr*ck who rips out all the seats with his stanley knife. of course you can't charge like that, so it's left at $5 for everyone.

in general terms, the road user charge is based on the sound economic principle of 'costing the externalities', which means you make the consumer pay the true cost of their consumption - in this case, truckies using the road. the advantage of doing this is that when you do that, they quickly work out ways to improve their efficiency (i.e. damage the road less and cost taxpayers less).

 

[jules]

The cost of petrol is the cost of doing business. These truckies are idiots who should go do something useful, rather than sit around causing mayhem.

it's sad for them because most truckies don't know much about economics and are confused about why they can't make money. that sounds arrogant but it's true.

truckies shouldn't care about fuel prices, if their industry was working properly, they'd just charge it back to their customers - coles, woolies etc. for the reasons we discussed, it doesn't though.

but yeah economic rationalism rules :thumbsup:

it's harsh but it makes sense when you understand it.

 

[FusionX]

your post is pretty accurate, based on my simple understanding of the science. but i've also been told that arguably the bigger issue is overloading. although a 40 tonne truck does much more damage to the road than a car, it's the cowboy running at 50 tonnes who's really tearing it up (due to the 4th power law you mentioned). and when he drives over a bridge, in effect the entire population gets their wallets out to pay.

Not sure what its like over east/NZ, but here, heavy haulage are on the roads everyday and most of my guys get weighed atleast once somewhere on the roads. But most run over weighbridges, so cart legally.

For a semi, average weight is 42.5 tonne (6 on steers/11 for twin steer, 16.5 on bogie's and 20 on tri's, but depends on wheels and axle spacings and without accreditted extra mass which allows more on bogie/tri setups)

If you overloaded somewhere here by 10 tonne, if picked up, truck would have to unload before moving, good bye license and risks jail.