Trucking operations and their representative organisations kicked top gear this week thanking the hard-working men and woman that are out on the road every day making sure the New Zealand economy keeps ticking over.
Stations at truck stops and hubs around the country have been busy so far and the reception from truckies has been positive across the board.
Some even didn’t believe that this was happening, ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’ they say, well this week that statement is false as shown by the huge support from the industry.
“There’s been a lot of happy campers out here today,” says David Aitken, CEO of National Road Carriers….”We’ve handed out over 100 sausages in one morning, most of the truckies ask where the donation box is, they think we are fundraising….we say no! today is for you!”
Along with this there were also celebrations going on in other parts of the country. The Road Transport Association put on food and drink for drivers at the Canterbury A&P showgrounds with the help of ASB Asset Finance.
“It was a great day down here,” says RTA Canterbury rep Simon Carson…”we had about 80 drivers show up and put on some food and drink for them. They all stayed for 30 minutes or more over their break. They were also gifted with a few goodies for them to take with them….the response was really good, some of the reactions were priceless, they couldn’t believe something like this was being done just for them.”
The National Truck Driver Appreciation Week is the perfect opportunity to acknowledge the hard-working men and women of the New Zealand road transport industry, says Road Transport Forum Chief Executive Ken Shirley.
“Everyday road transport operators haul tens of thousands of tonnes of freight all over the country; be that food for supermarket shelves, logs from forestry skid sites, export product to our ports or building materials to the construction site.”
Shirley says that the industry gets a lot of ill-informed negative publicity and that “New Zealand’s truck drivers are on-the-whole highly-skilled professionals doing a very challenging job. They often work in remote locations through the dead of the night to make sure that freight is delivered safely where and when the rest of us demands it, a service that most New Zealanders just take for granted.”
“The fact is that if we can’t transport our goods to market, whether that be domestically or to international customers, our economy will grind to a halt.”
“The dedicated men and women of the road transport industry very rarely ask for it, but this week is a chance for the rest of us to finally say ‘thanks’ for all they do. They really are the driving force of our economy,” says Shirley.
Road Torque will be back again next week with an overview of the entire week!
