Economic benefits of improved regulation in the Australian trucking industry

Trucking is important to the Australian economy, both directly through the size of the industry and indirectly through the economic activity it enables. Australia has the fifth largest freight task in the world and a large land mass, with a relatively sparse population. All this means that moving goods efficiently around the country is critical. 

Regulation of the Australian trucking industry has undergone significant reform over the past few decades. The introduction of the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) and the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) in 2014 marked a turning point, which saw trucking regulation attempt to move from a fragmented approach to a more efficient national approach. Five years on, industry has identified several challenges with the regulations – particularly in the areas of restricted access vehicles, higher mass limits and the Intelligent Access Program (IAP), and oversize overmass vehicles. 

The Australian Trucking Association (ATA) has engaged Deloitte Access Economics to analyse the current state of regulations for heavy vehicles in the Australian trucking industry and the potential benefits of improved approaches to regulation. Deloitte finds that addressing the challenges in the use of modern, larger articulated vehicles has the potential to generate significant benefits for Australia’s economy. Deloitte estimates that over the period from 2020 to 2050, there could be: 

• $13.6 billion (NPV) in potential cost savings for trucking businesses
• A further $0.5 billion (NPV) reduction in transport externalities.

Across the wider economy, this could possibly lead to a decrease in costs for Australian industries of some $0.9 billion a year by 2050. For consumers, the cost reduction is around $352 million a year in the long run.

Published: April 2019