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I went to another funeral yesterday. Truck driver, father, husband, son, brother, friend. Sadness and grief for a man doing his job, his life shortened because he was trying to do one more load in a job he loved. He is not the first to lose his life doing what we do, and won’t be the last. Even the reasons why this tragedy occurred will occur again.
A key man falls sick, another is used to replace him, though experienced he is out of practice in this aspect of our game and he makes an error in judgment, he pays the ultimate price.
How we react at this time shows the true character of all those around. Nothing you do will change the grief of his family and friends, he is gone. With good support and in time, those that grieve the deepest will come to terms with the loss and the pain will lose its edge.
I don’t know that we can stop this happening again, the Health & Safety Act is a start, but only time will tell if it is an excellent piece of legislature designed by our leaders or just another big stick to beat us into the ground.
While the attitude of some transport companies remains, that this is just another imposition to pay lip service too, then nothing will change.
I for one am sick of going to funerals before their due-date. I am sick of the energy required to be an ambulance at the bottom of the hill and I am sick of grieving for friends and family cut down in their prime.
I need to feel the power that comes from being proactive.
So what can we do?
· Every one of us can get behind our industry leaders to lobby for all of the RUC’s collected, to be spent on our roads. Or call it what it is, a subsidy for those who use diesel, but not on the roads and a damn good way to fill up the consolidated fund.
· Stop treating the H&S Act as a joke. If the thing needs adjusting, adjust it. We live in a democracy, your opinion counts and you work in the same workplace we do, one day, it maybe your family grieving.
· Life Insurance for all your staff, in dollar terms from the profit line this is minimal. To the loved ones left behind, financial security creates the room for the healing to begin. If your not making enough from your business to do this, raise your rates, if the only way you can compete in the transport industry is by being the cheapest and undercutting the opposition, get out of the game, we don’t need you, and your going broke but are to dumb to know it.
· Train your staff; treat their training like your own, an investment for the future. See it as just another cost imposed by the crazy lefties and it’s only a matter of time brother; get out before you go broke.
· Start paying them what there worth and stop treating them like an expendable commodity to be worked into the ground.
· When tragedy occurs ask yourself “have I truly done everything I can”
If your attitude is “What can I do to make this situation better” it may help save us all from attending anymore, unnecessary, premature funerals.
But then, it is “just an old trucker’s point of view”
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