What to know when driving your tractor on a public road

If you have ever looked into the rules on this, it may have been a confusing experience!  Fortunately, farmers’ interest groups have gone to an extensive amount of effort over recent years in order to ensure that the number of permits that you require from May 2019 might now simply be “zero”.

Please note that the information in this article does not apply to transporting tractors etc. by semi-trailers or trucks. If this is your intention, then you will need to seek out information regarding the Heavy Vehicle National Law 2012 (‘HVNL)’ at www.nhvr.gov.au/law-policies/heavy-vehicle-national-law-and-regulations.

Instead, this article is to assist farmers who wish to drive their tractors on a public road and want to know the correct set of regulations to obey.

The rules you may already be familiar with:

The sets of government guidelines or “gazettes” which prescribe the rules for operating tractors on public roads operate under a system of “alternative compliance”, which can be confusing in practice.

For example, Queensland has the Guideline for Excess Dimension Agricultural Vehicles and Agricultural Combinations 2014, which essentially lays out a set of rules and practices that an individual can follow in order to “ignore” or “replace” the provisions of the standard Transport Operations (Mass, Dimensions and Loading) Regulation 2005.

However, this system of alternative “guidelines” is far from simple. To illustrate, the Queensland guideline mentioned above only replaces the standard regulations insofar as it concerns “excess dimensions”. In other words, it only concerns length and width, but says nothing about the rules concerning mass, which is very likely to be a reasonable concern for any farmer attempting to move a 9-tonne sprayer rig.

So, farmers have essentially been required to (a) use the more comprehensive guidelines provided for cotton harvesters, if applicable, or (b) “mix and match” the excess dimension guidelines with a heavy vehicle permit, which defeats the purpose and convenience of the excess dimension guidelines allowing an operator to forego obtaining a permit in the first place.

The new rules – an easier solution:

Most of the rules which are likely to affect any farmer who wishes to drive a tractor on a public road have now been consolidated within the National Class 1 Agricultural Vehicle and Combination Mass and Dimension Exemption Notice 2019 (‘the National Exemption’) at www.nhvr.gov.au/files/c2019g00441-national-class-1-agricultural-vehicle-and-combination-mass-and-dimension-exemption-notice-2019-no2.pdf  

These rules are also accompanied by the official National Class 1 Agricultural Vehicle and Combination Mass and Dimension Exemption Notice Operator’s Guide, which can be found at www.nhvr.gov.au/files/201904-1043-national-class-1-agricultural-vehicle-and-combination-operators-guide.pdf which is a concise and reader-friendly collection of these requirements.

The guide is designed to be read alongside the Agricultural Heavy Vehicle Zone Map at https://nhvr.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=ffa527a24fd040ac9082235f000a73ee and covers topics that include load limits, dimension and mass limits, warning devices, night-time travel requirements and situations in which pilot vehicles are required. You will only require a permit when you wish to operate outside of these parameters (such as by exceeding the mass limit for a given geographic zone).

These National Exemptions are also within a “transitional period”, which means that anyone who has taken the effort to comply with the previous guidelines (or any associated permits) can simply continue doing so until May 2020. However, farmer’s must pick one or the other for each journey; in other words, the “mixing and matching” of provisions is not permitted.

Is that all you need to worry about?

Even though the National Exemption is much more comprehensive than the State-level guidelines, it is not intended to replace the entirety of the HVNL. For example, the Exemption does not exclude the requirements of the Heavy Vehicle (Registration) National Regulation (Qld) or the Heavy Vehicle (Vehicle Standards) National Regulation (Qld). Farmers should be aware that, if a topic is not directly related to the usage of tractors on public roads, then it is unlikely to have been affected by the National Exemption.    

In particular any farmer who plays any role in the transport supply chain should seek legal advice regarding the strict ‘chain of responsibility’ provisions detailed within the HVNL. Otherwise, failures to take proper precautions aimed at ensuring that all related parties (included a transport operator who has been hired to move your goods) obey the relevant transport regulations could lead to a situation where you, as the primary producer, could potentially share hundreds of thousands of dollars in liability for breaches. For further information, the Queensland Farming Federation has provided a useful summary video on the HVNL “chain of responsibility” at https://www.qff.org.au/blog/primary-producers-heavy-vehicle-national-law-chain-responsibility/.

The content of this column is to provide a general guide on this topic.  Professional advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.