From bad to worse

Transport Certification Australia (TCA), the company administering the Intelligent Access Program (IAP), has announced that Sigtec has advised TCA of its intention to cease being an IAP Service Provider.

By pulling out of the government’s much-touted IAP program, Sigtec have left truck operators wanting to get the most out of the concessions available to operations tracking their trucks under the IAP program with only one service provider to talk to.

It has taken the TCA long enough to get two providers certified and to see one of them bail out at such an early stage should set the alarm bells ringing.

Truck operators are straining at the leash to get out on the road with productive equipment and are prepared to wear the high electronic tracking and monitoring costs to do so.

It would seem the bar for entry has been set too high and the service providers who will supply on board monitoring equipment along with live monitoring and reporting services have to jump through so many expensive hoops they are putting IAP into the too-hard basket.

Meanwhile truck combinations and trailers are doing their work less productively and genuine fuel and greenhouse gas saving innovations are having to wait in the wings while TCA laboriously certifiy IAP Service providers.

TCA’s Chief Executive Officer, Chris Koniditsiotis, claims TCA has received a significantly higher than expected number of applications from companies seeking to become IAP Service Providers and was working with these applicants towards achieving IAP certification.

How much longer does the transport industry of Australia have to wait?