Accolades for Rod on anti-truck site

There was high praise indeed for long-time truck campaigner Rod Hannifey on the anti-truck website ‘Coast to Coast 100′. A recently published article on the site congratulated him on his work for safety on the roads and his constant lobbying for road improvements.

The site is normally a home to car drivers writing long and complex letters of complaint about truckies tailgating them or harassing them on the road. It can prove to be pretty upsetting reading for those of us who despair at the attitude of the car drivers, who seem to spend their time making life difficult for the trucking community.

Coast to Coast does reinforce a lot of the wrongly-held fears of those car drivers who truck drivers find so infuriating, with their lack of knowledge about life on the road and tendency to panic when large trucks are close to their car.

Many of the contributors are right thinking people who will listen to both sides of an argument but the ethos of the website does pander to the worst of the anti-truck brigade (Why don’t they put all of the stuff on trains?) and does not seek to educate the whingers on the realities of life out on Australian highways.

However, Rod does get a good rap from the site after meeting up with them at the recent Newcastle Truck Awareness weekend. He deserves all of his accolades, he does work tirelessly and has repeatedly got the truck driver’s message across to those in power.

However, his timing was a little unfortunate recently when he managed to get Brendan Nelson to take a ride with him in his K104 cab for the day. Only a couple of weeks later Mr Nelson was out on his ear and consigned to the back benches in the opposition in Parliament House.

Ah well, better luck next time, Rod!