turboplanner

Keith, there's not a lot of point to think tanking here when the subject matter is so vast.

 

One good idea can be knocked out by another, and you must have a market before you come up with a product.

 

For example we stopped for lunch at Mitchell one day and the train arrived, maybe 6 carriages of it, with six people on board - you don't want to add any of those.

 

And as far as freight is concerned, it has to be cost efficient.

 

You might have heard about the fights between primary producers and Queensland Rail some years ago where QR kept on increasing the rates up to the pork and beef abattoirs.

 

It came to a head where one producer hired a limo, put his pig in the back, bought it a bottle of champagne, and STILL got it into Rockhampton cheaper than QR.

 

The biggest issue we have today is we don't have an overview, and with the mining boom declining, we need one fast.

 

 

LOL FH this is the EXACT reciprocal of all crashed light aircraft being Cessnas.

 

An atrocious slur on Australia's agribusiness in general, and reminiscent of Dad and Dave.

 

 

That's probably because of you FT, we're all seeing psychologists trying to cope with the endless one liners

 

 

.......moved to Ykickamongrel where he was trained in sheep calling using a tun whustle, and givin a Sutificate and green flennel jucket with......

 

 

Wages, cost of living etc are small pieces of a big pie.

 

It certainly is time in Australia where we sat down and assessed where we are and where we are going, and the "we" should not be politicians who don't have the time or the inevitable vested interests, so the Government could do it through the Committee system, which is bipartisan (this may come as a surprise to some of the most raucous on here), and have the Committee manage the process, but hire some professionals, including Sociologists, paid to do the job.

 

Too many things have just accumulated:

 

I can recall a top rate of 23% income tax, and sales tax confined more to non-essentials

 

Coming back to that may mean reducing "social services", and that's the first minefield

 

We have no hope of catching up with the cost medical needs as the gap widens alarmingly

 

We are paying well above CPI for electricity, and water in some States

 

We are sitting on hundreds of years of LP Gas in Bass Strait, so could run our cars on it at 2c/litre

 

We have fallen massively behind with high speed long distance commuter rail

 

We have failed to decentralise, so we have these single anthills in each State called cities and all the ants go one way on two or three tracks in the morning and the other way at night

 

Our cost of manufacture can never match those of countries producing 30 times our volume

 

We knew that and developed a tariff system, but Senator Button knew better and tore that down causing a manufacturing exodus

 

In many respects regardless of the above it takes many weeks less for our nett income to cover the cost of a car, and we can afford to throw whitegoods out when a fuse blows.

 

In our peri-urban areas less scrupulous developers by up huge parcels of land in the growth areas, then release about 3% per year, artificially inflating land prices.

 

If all the growth area land was required to be either farmed or sold, and the governments changed new home buyers for roads/lights/electricity/gas/sewerage/water/trains/buses/schools etc at cost, in some states the cost of a block of land would be hundreds of thousands of dollars less than it is now without most of that infrastructure.

 

That's only what I could think of in the last few minutes; you can see there are many opportunities, before getting on to how Australia will get its income post mining boom, which appears to be on our doorstep right now.

 

 

......haystack......

 

 

You're a member, go and do something about it, no point whining to us and then not backing us up when we make a noise.

 

 

"......eet my fush and chups and apply for unimploymint binifets, while I........"

 

 

............sound like a second hand refugee from NZ, with a .......................

 

 

...or did you?..............

 

 

I do talk to them, by the hundreds; that's my job. In the last five years I've given them the biggest cab in the industry, and a set of sleeper cabs with equipment aligned to the application up to 67" sleepers with cooking facilities and diesel powered air conditioning. I was one of the driving forces behind the recent fatigue regulations adopted by every State and Territory.

 

The whole truck industry now operates under Chain of Responsibility legislation where, if the distribution manager of a large company coerces a trucking company which coerces a driver to drive out of hours, all the people up the line can be charged for any resulting accident, and already there are cases where they have been.

 

Today, no driver can legally have excessive or dangerous working hours. No exceptions. The last of the subbies who try to use that excuse to squeeze in extra loads are certainly being squeezed out rapidly and so they should be.

 

Maybe you have wild west Tow Truck operators where you are, but in Victoria, tow trucks are allocated, and haven't turned up unannounced at accident sites for several decades, and operate very professionally. They don't deserve to be slagged.

 

"If the regulations were relaxed it would go back to where it was"

 

If my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle; the regulations are not being relaxed, so this is a pointless argument.

 

 

In the US?

 

 

Well not so well controlled, there was a lot of fuel tankers and trucks sitting around last year from corner cutting,,,,and they were the ones that got caught!Matty

Just one had a crash, and was found to be unroadworthy; the unroadworthy factor as far as I'm aware has not been announced as the cause of the crash, however ALL the NSW trucks of Cootes Transport were checked, and those with roadworthy issues grounded before being allowed back on the road. Before that was completed a combined task force of RTA NSW officers who travelled to Victoria, and Vicroads checked all the Victorian trucks of Cootes Transport, and grounded any with roadworthy issues until they were fixed.

 

I'd call that well controlled.

 

If RAA did the same there would be Hissy Fits from Broome to Bessietown

 

 

The trucking and towtruck industries are two very good example of what happens when you don't keep a lid on the cowboys

What on earth are you talking about? Both these industries are very tightly controlled, and statistically sound.

 

 

Won't Warren Truss just install an out of work farmer in the top job?

From my experience with him, he wouldn't have been able to get around to think of that one, but it would probably be a vast improvement.

 

 

A review of function and performance of this organisation is long overdue. It is unpredictable and inconsistent in aim policies and direction. It probably requires a change of the act of Parliament under which it operates. It would impose a sense of uncertainty to all participants in the Industry that could well be done without. US FAA seems to function much better as they seek to AID the industry, not shackle it. Nev

No change of the Act is needed, just some bi-partisan recognition that rolling several departments into one reduces oversight, and a few decades of this has led to an out of control situation, which needs to be brought under control.

 

 

The systemic problems are bigger than McC.

 

A better solution would be what the Victorian Government did with the Transport Regulation Board which spiralled out of any control, had enforcement officers carrying guns etc. It closed the TRB down, and converted the two multi story towers in Carlton into Units.

 

We've never missed the TRB, and Regulations are no longer produced by the dozen every year by bureaucrats who never drove vehicles, but by the Parliament after debate through two Houses and representation from the Community.

 

 

...expose my sordid past, and leak it out that the first thing I did as a board member was go to XXXXX [Name deleted - Mod] and ask for a pair of epaulettes, and the second was to buy the book "How to keep secrets from members" by YYYYYYYYYYYYY YYYYYY [Name deleted - Mod], and if that so and so had done what I told him and kept it a secret I wouldn't be......................"

 

 

"paint them with sump oil, usually after I've finished welding up the exhaust, which at the moment looks like a piece of $100,000.00 art sculpture, and is about as useless but.............."

 

 

Has happened to all of us, and I may have even mentioned this sort of thing previously.# Working from two dimension drawings into three dimensions, or even from 3 D Cad, the mind doesn't seem to visualise everything in 3D, but with the benefit of hindsight the odd mistake just looks so obvious.

 

Its just part of the design stage.

 

# e.g. a major diesel engine manufacturer's oil galleries are somehow restricted, and it's necessary to use very expensive oil to solve the problem.

 

 

"........Turbo, who was having quite a lot of trouble with premature oil changes, and had been wondering if his through-bolt might also fail".

 

"I used a mixture of hydrochloric acid, sand and nitroglycerine on mind and haven't had any problems with it" said Harriet

 

The next day Turbo came and and said "I used that mix and now I don't have a through bolt at all!"

 

"I don't either" said Harriet

 

"Well when did you start using the mixture?" asked Turbo

 

"Yesterday morning" replied Harriet

 

Madge had been quietly listening, as he does for a minute or ........

 

 

"...hear that dreadful rattle that precedes a lack of performance, when......."

 

 

....but before rat could finish Loxy butted in with "I tried see - through bags but it was too much information. Now all I have to do is think of someone and..........."

 

 

Effi, "coloured is good, for bags"

 

"What do you mean..........."

 

 

.......brought in more painted 200 litre drums with the tops cut out, known locally as Wagga Spittoons, because.....