As the backbone of our country, truck drivers leave their families for long periods of time to ensure our food and primary industry produce gets from paddock to plate.
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However, the unresolved issue of people continually throwing rocks at their moving trucks, especially on the Moree bypass, has these vital workers feeling like second-class citizens.
On Sunday night Michelle Franklin’s husband Terry was driving through the Moree bypass, past the zebra crossing and lights when he heard something that sounded like “shots fired”.
It was a showering of palm-sized rocks being thrown at his truck from the side of the road. Mr Franklin called his boss and pulled up in Bellata to assess the damage.
He found four predominant dents on the passenger side near the bunk and when he informed his wife, she took to Facebook to warn other truck drivers in the area.
“I posted something on QLD Pads and the response I got was shocking. There were so many truck drivers saying the same thing had happened to them. One bloke even the night before Terry and 12 months ago one of the rocks went through his windscreen and he had to get stitches in his face,” she said.
Mrs Franklin wrote to mayor Katrina Humphries on the Moree Plains Shire Council Facebook page, on behalf of all concerned and angry truck drivers, informing her of the incident and asked what was being done to stop the huge safety issue.
“They are angry and its getting to the point where truck drivers don’t think anything is going to get done about it. One driver was talking to me last night; he feels like his is a second-class citizen because of the way he is treated.
“At the end of the day if it wasn’t for them delivering food and other produce, and this was his words, people simply wouldn’t get fed,” she said.
A Brisbane truck driver Sonya White reached out to Mrs Franklin asking for help with the horrible situation and before long she was added to a ‘Report Rock Throwing’ Facebook page.
They’ve encouraged all truck drivers and their families to join the group and report incidents in there with exact dates, times, details, photos, videos and any other information so it can be collected and taken further.
“The more evidence we have, the more we can do about it. We can take this higher up.
“What it all boils down to is safety and that goes for both sides. At the end of the day truck drivers are getting fed up and it only takes one to retaliate out of anger and I don’t want that to happen.
“Something needs to be done before something absolutely terrible happens on both the victim and the offenders side,” she said.
More to come on this ongoing issue.
