A truck driver has complained about other truckies dumping large quantities of grain in parking bays.
Stuart Taylor, who is based in Katanning, WA, said it’s a major issue at parking bays along the Dumbleyung-Lake Grace Road.
He told Big Rigs: “There’s a big difference between someone sweeping their trailer out and half a tonne of grain being dumped on the ground.
“Especially in the winter, it just stinks of rotting grain at these parking bays.
“If someone pulls up with their kids to have a rest at a parking bay, what do you think those kids are going to do? Jump straight into that rotting grain.”
Taylor thinks the drivers responsible should be “named and shamed” and sent a bill for the clean-up.
“Main Roads will come along to clean it up, shovelling it all onto the back of a trailer, and a few days later there’s another big heap of it there. It’s not on.
“I haven’t caught anyone dumping grain but if I do see them, I will be pulling up pretty quickly and giving them a piece of my mind.
“The drivers say there’s nowhere to get rid of it but maybe they should be talking to the grain companies about that.”
John Bednall, who has been a truckie in WA and SA for 35 years, acknowledged that the dumping of grain is an issue – but said grain carters are left with very few options due to time pressures and sheds that aren’t fit for purpose.
He told Big Rigs that grain companies’ sheds are often very old and not high enough for modern trailers to tip into at their full extension.
“What happens is, because you can’t get your trailer to full height, a lot of grain is left in there.
“Up to 200kg or 300kg, sometimes half a tonne. Getting that out is really hard.
“That’s when you find that some people will go to a parking bay and try to get it out with a shovel or a broom.
“There they can lift their trailers to full height, pop the tailgate and it just goes on the ground. And they blow the rest out with a blower.”
Bednall, who carted B double trailers for a number of years to various sites around Adelaide, said that when you tip over into a grid, you’re often very tight on time.
“There’s generally a line of trucks behind you waiting, and the receivers of the grain want you off the grid as quickly as possible as well because they’ve got other trucks to tip in there and process.
“If you’ve got a B double, you’ve got to jump into both trailers with a leaf blower and try to blow the grain out. You barely have time to do that.
“Then when you get off the grid, there’s nowhere to stop because you can’t tip grain on the ground anywhere around the facility. So it poses a massive problem.”
He said grain carters will often have to do a backload, and sometimes that load is fertiliser.
“If you’ve got a farmer who gets a load of fertiliser and it’s got wheat grain or oat grain in it, he’s not going to be happy. He may reject it or ask for a discount.
“So drivers are trying to get rid of that grain in the only way they can.”