Shoppers count cost as truck crash and explosion adds 550km to goods route

THE devastating truck explosion on the Mitchell Highway near Charleville could mean higher prices at the checkout.

Checkout prices tipped to rise

THE truck explosion on the Mitchell Highway near Charleville could mean higher prices at the checkout.

Queensland Trucking Association CEO Peter Garske said heavy vehicles that used the route between Cunnamulla and Charleville would need a 550km detour.

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“There will be a very considerable cost to the customers of the trucking industry as a consequence,” Mr Garske said. “The vehicles will have to take a longer route, which means extra time, wages and fuel consumption.”

The remote stretch of road remains closed after a truck hauling ammonia nitrate rolled and exploded when the volatile chemical mixed with diesel. Aside from road damage, the bridge over Angellala Creek was also destroyed.

Transport companies said the detour through St George and Roma would add 550km to the route.

Mr Garske estimated the cost of fuel alone for the extra kilometres would result in a blow out of almost $1500 for transport companies that used the highway.

“The trucking industry has no capacity to absorb that cost and it will have to be passed on,” he said.

“And for some industries that’s going to be really tough because that route is used extensively for the movement of cattle.”

An Agforce spokesman said truckies usually used the route to ship cattle down to NSW from up north. He predicted rises of up to $15 a head in the stockyards.

Trucking companies that used the Mitchell Highway said the closure had considerably slowed their operations.

“You’re looking at delays of about a day by the time the driver takes an eastern route around the highway,” a spokesman for Shaw’s transport in Darwin said.

He said the company would not be making any changes to the pricing structure at least until they knew how long it would take to mend the highway.

A Transport Department spokeswoman was unable to offer a time frame for the repairs because workers were yet to gain access to the blast site, with a 500m exclusion zone in place until tomorrow morning.

The driver of the truck that exploded received burns to about 30 per cent of his body and remains in a critical condition in the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital.

The wreckage of the truck after the crash and subsequent explosion.