Build quality not quantity says Bajool truckie

Mr Thomas said the government would be better off paying the extra money to build a quality highway for the foreseeable future.

LONG HAUL: Andrew Thomas of Bajool calls for highway quality workmanship on highway construction. Picture: Jann Houley

WHEN it comes to election promises to upgrade the Bruce Hwy between Rockhampton and Gladstone to four lanes all the way, an experienced truckie said it's time to put quality before quantity.

Andrew Thomas has managed Rod North and Sons Transport out of Bajool for six years and drove trucks between Brisbane and Cairns for many years before that.

"Yes, we need more overtaking lanes and extra facilities such as off-street parking and extra toilets," he said.

"If you're driving long haul and you don't have a park by midnight, you'd be hard up finding somewhere to stay.

"But take a look at the highway upgrades which were rolled out only two years ago and you'll see they're already falling apart because they weren't done properly."

Mr Thomas said that, after the rains, the highway between Bajool and Mt Larcom glazed over and became slippery.

On Archer Flats, where the road to Bob's Creek was recently widened, he said three company trucks had their windscreens smashed in a day.

"I wouldn't like to think how much that new stretch cost but they should have used better composite on the bitumen base," he said.

"They just put in cheap screenings and they didn't stick, so now the traffic coming the other way is throwing up chunks of road."

The company submits thousands of dollars of windscreen repair bills to the Main Roads Department which pay out through their insurance.

Mr Thomas said the government would be better off paying the extra money to build a quality highway for the foreseeable future.

"Instead they're always worrying about the cost factor and putting it out to the cheapest people," he said.

"Instead of doing 50kms that's only going to last for two years, they should do 20kms and make it last for 20 years.

"People who drive this stretch see the workers coming back week after week to do maintenance and repairs on the work, which was rolled out since the last election."

Mr Thomas also says the government should commit more resources to driver training.

"Everybody keeps blaming the road, but everybody's in too much of a hurry to show a bit of courtesy, and wait for the right time to overtake," he said.

He said that, on longer stretches, drivers seems to relax a bit more.

"I think there are lots of workers in Rockhampton who get sent out to Gladstone and back for the day and they're on a tight timeframe," he said.

"I think people need a lot more training about how to share the road when they get their licence straight out of school."

Mr Thomas admits that truckies "have issues too" and need to keep working on improving driver mentality.

"But if you're in a Wicked camper or towing a caravan doing 80km and a heavy vehicle is catching up, unless the slower car lets you overtake when getting to an overtaking lane the only way a heavy vehicle can get the speed to pass is to get very close the slower vehicle just before the start of the overtaking lane," he said.

"Heavy vehicles don't speed up like a Maserati and this would be seen by most of the general public as tailgating  which is not the case.

"This is what I referred to as the government needing to promote more awareness of how we all have to get along on the highway and how the overtaking lanes need to made longer and have more of them.

"At the end of the day the government needs to work on a combination of factors to make the roads safer, and building more shoddy roads isn't the right way."

Originally published as Build quality not quantity says Bajool truckie