Logging-truck business to rumble on, licence intact
A decision to revoke a major Northland logging-truck company’s transport licence has been dropped by the NZ Transport Agency.
In a letter to Stan Semenoff Logging Ltd (SSL), dated February 3, 2020, the agency’s senior manager safer commercial transport, Brett Aldridge, said its decision to revoke the transport-service licence in March 2019 had been withdrawn, on the basis it was no longer required.
Aldridge said the agency and SSL had agreed to certain conditions relating to the company’s operation, and staff management had undertaken to adhere to them for six months.
“SSL, of course, remains subject to ongoing oversight by the agency, as is the case with all transport-service providers.”
The letter stated the agency authorised SSL to disclose it to any agency, government department, or business partner as required.
Stan Semenoff said the agency had “got it wrong” in the first place and the letter confirmed that.
“We need to operate within the law, we have no problem with that and that’s what they are there to do,” Semenoff said in response to the decision.
In March 2019, the agency said it had revoked the company’s licence due to SSL’s continuing failure to address safety concerns.
However, SSL successfully appealed a decision to revoke the licence and 75 trucks remained on the road until the case was to be heard in court.
Two audits by NZTA revealed concerns relating to driver fatigue and behaviour, and included breaches of work-time and rest-time rules, pervasive logbook issues and the accumulation of 116 speed and traffic-related offences in a four-year period.
At the time, SSL said it did not consider NZTA had good grounds for its decision to revoke and there had never been serious safety concerns at the firm.
The decision not to revoke the licence comes as another NZTA investigation, challenged by SSL in the High Court, has seen the company issued with an assessment for unpaid road-user charges of $532,878.96 over a 10-month period.
NZTA analysed records for about 17,200 loads carried by Semenoff’s vehicles and found the truck and trailer units were travelling above their maximum allowable weight on about 68 per cent of the trips — 11,690 trips — based on records provided between July 2016 to April 2017.
It was submitted on behalf of SSL that the methodology the agency used was “totally arbitrary and bears no relation to the actual distance travelled overweight”.
SSL appealed the District Court decision in the High Court, which dismissed the appeal and said the District Court did not err in law.
In response, Semenoff said the case was “not over yet”.
“I, like most hard-working Kiwis, am very grateful for our courts and justice system. I respect the judge on her decision making regarding our case,” Semenoff said.
“But my experience over my lifetime is that judges can sometimes get rulings wrong.
“The methodology used to reach this ruling was not appropriate and we stand by that.”