Trucking along regardless of volatility and uncertainty

The last week or so has been like a long sailing voyage. Just when you think you’re through the worst of it and you’re starting to make good speed over ground and the seas are comfortable, the winds flare up. But in the back of my mind, I’m confident we will get through. 

The nice sailing indicators 

We saw in the latest BNZ – BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI), New Zealand’s manufacturing sector expanded significantly in June.  

“The seasonally adjusted PMI for June was 59.7 (a reading above 50.0 indicates that the manufacturing sector as a whole is expanding, whereas below 50.0 indicates a contraction). This was sharply up from 51.3 in May and 50.6 in April and sits well above the survey’s long-term average of 52.5,” said BusinessNZ. The PMI of 59.7 is the strongest reading since July 2021.  

Our Envisory fuel price monitoring report has been showing a trending down in the retail oil company cost and margins to levels not dissimilar to mid-January this year, and for petrol it was even lower.         

The ANZ Truckometer Heavy Traffic Index percentage change for June was 1.8 which compares well with -1.3% in June 2025. 

For June, new vehicle registrations for the larger heavy vehicle classes, TD (trailers with GVM greater than 10t) and NC (goods vehicles with GVM greater than 12t) were both up on last June. To be fair, they were still some way off June 2024, but the increases on 2025’s numbers is still a good sign. 

Some headwinds  

The resilience of our members was again tested with the weather taking out SH1 south of Kaikōura. The industry passed the test with flying colours; there was no critical suffering from delays in freight getting to where it needed to go. However, we shouldn’t walk past the fact that the additional detouring for freight probably cost in the order of a couple million dollars.      

The challenges with network resilience are only going to increase and the differences around the funding of local roads versus state highways creates an interesting dynamic. In some cases, a local road could present a viable alternative – albeit needing a little investment. However, NZTA will have a natural bias and prefer to invest in the state highway route and make that more resilient.  

It’s an interesting philosophical approach to resilience planning, and it’s not dissimilar to the decision to invest in improved maintenance and hope the Interislander ferries are less likely to break down rather than introducing another vessel.  

Transporting New Zealand believes having alternatives available is a better approach. We’re dealing with a specific roading case here which is at risk of suffering from this predicament, and I believe this will set an important precedent – so watch this space. 

Smoothing the waters  

Over the last couple of months we’ve been dealing with some of NZTA’s transitional rule changes, one of those being somewhat inadvertent and seemingly unnecessary.   

There has been some confusion with the pending removal of 50MAX permits. We had a meeting late yesterday with NZTA and even as late as this morning we have been in further correspondence on the information it is providing.  

Our best advice to members with permits is sit tight and don’t do anything right now. Hopefully by early next week we can provide an update on what operators need to do and by when.  

It’s concerning that the removal of permit requirements will not be as simple as it could have and should have been. This will mean more changes are required which will commence almost immediately from when this transition takes effect! That will take time, effort and impose costs – for operators and for NZTA – which could have been avoided.  

We’ve also been looking into NZTA’s advice proposing that the recording of vehicle’s registration details needs changing, particularly on the naming of a person and/or a company. This matter looks very close to resolution and I am very hopeful these changes will not be required. We will provide an update on this next week.  

One thing that has become clearer now more than ever is the importance of NZTA engaging the industry, particularly those most impacted by its changes. The flip side is the industry needs to do its bit to make that process easier and clearer for the agency.