Livestock carrier Craig Melville from Longwarry slams VicRoads

Gippsland-based Craig Melville, who has driven trucks for 23 years, said a government error had prevented him from re-registering his two-axle dog trailer following its partial restoration almost six months ago.

Mr Melville, who runs Melville Contracting, undertook a $35,000 restoration on his prized 1994 International T Line T2700, and opted against renewing the registration for his trailer while the truck was off the road.

Four months after the lapse in registration when Mr Melville attempted to re-register the trailer, VicRoads deemed it to be a potentially stolen vehicle because he did not have a vehicle identification number.

Mr Melville said the 1980 Freighter trailer was never assigned a VIN from the time it was manufactured, and instead it was previously registered without one.

Prior to his ownership, another carrier had owned the trailer since 1990.

"It's massively frustrating, in fact I'd go as far as saying it's absolutely dismal," Mr Melville said.

Following the March 2023 meeting at VicRoads in Leongatha to register the trailer, Mr Melville said the agency had been challenging to communicate with and claimed it was "impossible" to get an answer about how he could register the trailer.

"I said to VicRoads, 'that's fine, let's get the process going' but we're now five months into it and I have no one at VicRoads to talk to, I've got no point of contact to check its progress," he said.

Mr Melville, who lives at Longwarry, said police from Warragul provided him with a statutory declaration to prove the trailer's legitimacy, but VicRoads said the paperwork was inadequate to verify the trailer.

"It's common for older trailers not to have VINs, and previously it was just registered as a vehicle with no VIN," Mr Melville said.

"If I could talk to someone and they said, 'It's still miles behind, mate, you're not going to see anything for three months', I would at least know where I was at and start the process of finding another trailer.

"It's hard to go and spend the money on something else when they could turn around tomorrow and give me a VIN, get my roadworthy and then put my plates on it."

While the trailer was off the road and the prime mover was being restored, Mr Melville said the trailer underwent extensive work, including receiving a new axle, springs and brakes.

He said he was unable to recoup the cost of the work because of the "drama" with VicRoads.

"Financially, it hurts a lot because I have to pay other carriers to do work that I should be doing," he said.

The truck and dog trailer combination, both which span 24 feet respectively, are ideal for hard-to-access yards across Gippsland, as well as French Island where Mr Melville travels by barge at least 45 times a year.

Most times, Mr Melville leaves the dog trailer on the mainland and take the truck across on the barge.

"I'd get a load of cattle on French Island, come back and put a load on the dog trailer and then go back over and get my second load and go to the saleyards," he said.

"I can't do that at the moment without a dog trailer so I have to have someone else sitting down there so that when I come off the barge, because it's all done by tides, I have to have someone else's truck ready to load.

"I lose half a job because it's something I could be easily doing if the trailer was on the road."

A VicRoads spokesman said multiple discussions between the organisation and Mr Melville had taken place since Stock & Land raised the issue on his behalf.

"The VicRoads customer service team is working with Mr Melville to ensure the vehicle meets our robust safety standards to allow it to be registered for use on the road network," he said.