Farmers welcome logbook decision

Press, 19 February 1988, Page 13

Farmers welcome logbook decision

Federated Farmers have welcomed the decision by the Ministry of Transport to . exempt farmers from keeping logbooks when they ' are doing agricultural work. The federation’s president, Mr Brian Chamberlin, said the Ministry had recognised it was impossible to police farmers driving vehicles on their own properties. Farmers will not now have to fill out logbooks when they travel by road to a runoff property. “Clearly it was absurd to ask farmers to waste time filling in logbooks every time they hopped on a tractor. “This was an unintended consequence of changes to promote safer driving and was quite unworkable unless we wanted the big brother situation of traffic officers wasting their valuable time inspecting farmers’ logbooks.” He said the driver of a goods service vehicle towing a multi-axle trailer where the combined weight of the two does not exceed 5.5 tonnes will also be exempt from keeping a

logbook. “Previously we had the situation where drivers of utilities carrying a horse float or other multi-axle trailer had to maintain a logbook every day. This was a huge inconvenience for people who drove these vehicles perhaps once a week.” He said the federation had asked the Ministry to give greater flexibility to stock carriers when granting exemptions from driving hours. In some cases the Ministry has extended the 11 hours of driving, loading and unloading allowed to 13 hours.