Local and International News

Long long-haul B-trains

Two identical 22.3-metre six-axle B-trains, built to a proforma design allowed under the new High Productivity Motor Vehicle higher mass permits have gone to work as Auckland-Christchurch swaps.

And yes, the units do squeeze through the tunnels on the Kaikoura Coast, they can be manoeuvred on and off the Cook Strait ferries…and they do get around the two hairpin bends on State Highway 1, above Lake Taupo, north of Turangi.

Better still….the two Roadmaster Glidemaster dry-freight B-trains do provide the extra cubic freight space that Daily Freight was looking for.

Kiwifruit character: Cute….or misguided?

It’s a cute, friendly-looking billboard – a kiwifruit cartoon-character truckie, happily saying: “I share the road.”

But is it unfairly giving truckdrivers a bad name? Singling them out as a group of drivers who (seemingly more than others), really need to think more about other road-users?

Well…..you decide.

The billboard is one of a set of animated kiwifruit character road safety signs recently updated along a stretch of State Highway 2 in Western Bay of Plenty, between Te Maunga and Paengaroa.

When New Zealand Truck & Driver received a NZ Transport Agency press release about the campaign, we figured that the need for the truckies-targeted billboard must have been based on accident stats.

It’s accompanied by others that also “speak” to passing road-users with safety messages in speed bubbles. One, for instance, says “Safety belts save lives.” Another: “New drivers – take extra care.”

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