Government hits brakes on plans to up rego fees for older trucks

The Austroads report has received an angry response from farmers, industry organisations and the Victorian Farmers Federation, which labelled the proposal unrealistic and unworkable.

The state and territory representative road body proposed increasing registrations on heavy vehicles above 4.5 tonnes GVM and manufactured before 2008 to lower emissions and improve public health.

The Options for Managing the Impacts of Aged Heavy Vehicles report found older heavy vehicles cost more to run per annum and policies such as differential registration fees could reduce the country's aging fleet.

But VFF Wimmera grains councillor Ryan Milgate, a mixed grain and livestock farmer based east of Minyip, said older trucks often suited agricultural purposes more, particularly when used for seasonal work.

"There needs to be incentives for newer vehicles but I think the root of these problems is in and around the capital cities and industrial areas where they have trucks moving everday," Mr Milgate said.

"There are farmers who are doing less kilometres in a year than other commercial operators are in a month."

Mr Milgate said the increases to heavy vehicle registrations proposed in the report were in some cases a jump of 220 per cent on existing truck registration fees.

The cropping and sheep farmer has a fleet of four heavy vehicles, including three prime movers and said the oldest two trucks in his fleet would struggle to clock up 10,000-15,000km annually.

"The big issue out here is the new vehicles with DPF (a diesel particulate filter) and AdBlue are getting harder to fix and that becomes a challenge for farmers because they're not as easy to manage," he said.

"We had an electrical issue with our Volvo and because no one in the region could fix it, it had to go to Melbourne and that truck was post 2008 and ticked all the boxes in this report.

"The newer vehicles require specialised people and software and a lot of transport operators for that reason are running older vehicles because parts are easier to source."

Mr Milgate said in some cases it was unrealistic for farmers to purchase a newer truck particularly when it sat in the shed for a majority of the year outside its required use for seasonal work.

A letter viewed by Stock & Land from Roads and Road Safety Minster Ben Carroll confirmed there were no plans to increase registrations for older vehicles.

Mr Carroll said no official position had been established by the Victorian government in relation to the proposed Austroads paper.

Registration changes for heavy vehicles are determined by the National Transport Commission and implemented nationally.

The minister said the NTC had no plans to increase registration charges based on a vehicle's age.

Mr Carroll's response followed a letter from VFF president Emma Germano who urged the state government to reject the plan.

"Whilst the VFF is supportive of moves towards more environmentally friendly and safer trucks, increasing registration fees on older vehicles would disproportionately penalise primary producers," Ms Germano said.

"As noted in the report, by commodity cereal grain transport has the second highest percent of heavy vehicles over five years old.

"Primary producers typically only use their heavy vehicles to travel short distances during key production periods such as harvest, and increases to registration would make heavy vehicle ownership unaffordable for most producers."

Ms Germano said financial incentives and grants would be a more effective way to encourage the replacement of older trucks.