By RV Daily,
June 25, 2025
Words: Bruce Honeywill and RV Daily
Truck drivers are the real road warriors of this big brown country. Long after your big lap is done, they’ll still be out there beating the bitumen. When you drive a 130-tonne truck across the length and breadth of Australia for a living, you see it all. The good, the bad and the downright dangerous. Here are four things that get under truckies’ skin that you need to stop doing.
Parking in truck rest areas
A truck parking area isn’t a free camp where you can scrimp on caravan park fees. They are designated rest areas for truck drivers who don’t have the luxury of parking up in town. For a truckie, the roads are their workplace and these rest areas are their staff quarters – a place where they can sleep and recuperate.
Truck driver Charlie Keene drives a 53-metre, four-trailer road train and talks about the frustrations of trying to pull into a truck rest area hogged by caravans. On an overnight journey in outback Queensland, he describes having to bypass about four truck parking bays on a 160km stretch between Kyuna and Winton because they were overrun with caravans.
“It was about three in the morning, I was stuffed, tired,” Charlie says. “The pullout 20km south of Kynuna was full of caravans, I slowed but the last caravans were parked sideways across the entrance. I got up to speed again but was feeling pretty bloody wobbly. The next one was packed with caravans. I pulled up on the road with hazard lights going and ran around the truck, jumped up and down on the spot. Kept driving and eventually got my rest at Winton.” Charlie reckons his driving capability was diminished to about 25 per cent simply because he couldn’t get 20 minutes shut-eye to recharge.
For Charlie’s sake, use a public rest area next time you are looking for a free camp, not a truck parking bay reserved for road trains.
Jabbering on the two-way
How would you like it if you worked in a shopping centre and two shoppers decided to have a chinwag over the PA during your shift? The conversation – peppered with expletives – oscillates between roadkill, a beer inventory and the dire need for more firewood. Meanwhile, you need to use the PA because an emergency is unfolding and the public needs to be informed. Scenarios like this often play out on the roads when caravanners forget a UHF Radio is a critical communication tool, especially for truck drivers.
Lindsay Davies drives a big Western Star from Katherine, in the Northern Territory. He pulls a low-loader, or float, used for hauling heavy machinery, usually in a wide-load configuration. He’s a patient bloke but people larking on the radio gets his goat. “Channel 40 is for serious use,” Lindsay says. “The escort driver needs the channel to tell approaching traffic that a wide load is coming, and you’ll get a couple of old mates in vans chatting about how to best cook the barra tonight or the price of fuel at Dunmarra.”
Sure, truckies are guilty of misusing Channel 40 too, and all road users can do better. Switching to a less frequently used channel is a good start. “And caravanners could use the radio to let me know when they want to pass so I can give them room. We don’t bite,” Lindsay says.
Having all the gear and no idea
News flash. You don’t need a special licence or any heavy-vehicle training or accreditation to tow a caravan. But you should. Getting behind the wheel of a heavy 4WD pulling a 24ft caravan is like riding a six-tonne missile. At a minimum, caravanners should enrol in a professional towing course.
A truck driver must undertake a complex and staged licence process, do dangerous goods refresher courses every two years, and have regular medical checks. A caravanner, by comparison, can spend a lifetime in the city driving a small automatic runabout and, on retirement, set off in a 15-metre rig without any training or licensing provisions. And, according to truck drivers like Lindsay and Charlie, their inexperience shows.
There is no suggestion that truck drivers are angels. We all have the horror story of a speeding or tailgating truck, and there is no excuse for this behaviour. However, statistically, accidents involving trucks on a per-kilometre basis are way lower than the national average for motor vehicle accidents.
Driving on the go slow
The other big pet hate truckies have with caravanners is speed. And it’s not what you think. Many of the big road trains on outback roads have a maximum speed limit of 90km/h (or 100km/h in the NT). A caravanner might choose to sit on 90km/h too. However, 90km/h set on a car’s cruise control is probably only 86km/h in real terms. This is how car manufacturers set the speedometer. A truck, on the other hand, would likely have their speed set at a true 90km/h. Big deal, what’s the difference, you ask? Well, a five-kilometre-an-hour differential means an extra hour in a truck driver’s shift. The extra time could make the journey illegal under fatigue management laws. And a road train cannot always pass a caravan safely when there is a small speed differential.
The answer? Find a sweet spot in the mid-90s that provides safety and efficiency and there will be days on outback roads when you never see a truck going in the same direction as you because you are running with the flow of traffic. If you are a really cautious driver, the alternative is to slow to 80km/h and give way to other vehicles when they attempt to pass.
Most truck drivers and caravanners go about their daily journeys in harmony. But it’s always helpful to spare a thought for the men and women traversing the country in big trucks on gruelling 14-hour shifts. Mutual respect goes a long way to increase safety on our roads.
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I am a Grey Nomad and also hate to see this happen. I also think that there should be a truck only sign on these sites and a fine for other road users who use them. I also think that our road authorities should also get a kick in the bum for not making more rest areas that cater for all sorts of road users. After all they have known for years that caravan and truck traffic is increasing rapidly.
We all should lobby foe better roads and better rest areas.
I’m totally in sympathy with the truckies here. They have a hard job to to do and deserve our respect. We must work together to keep our roads safe.
We drive a bus towing a small 4 wheel drive. Yes we use parking bays for 3 reasons. One we, like you, get tired and to go on is dangerous, two we are ongoing up the highway and are simply sleeping for a few hours and going on and three many caravan parks are too small and we have to take the car off the trailer and then drop the trailer, get the bus onto the site and then attach the trailer to the car and park it. All that for a few hours sleep. Sharing a site with trucks is a fact of highway life. All road users are entitled to use the parking bags. What all of us need is better and more plentiful roadside stops. I would suggest that Queensland should look at some of the WA and the NT parking bays that are much bigger with areas further off the road that most caravans can take advantage of, leaving the closer area for the larger trucks. In all our travels throughout Australia we have had very little problems with most trucks, most drivers are courteous. If we can we will call you past, letting you know when it is safe and indicating when you are past us, so you can pull in. If we can’t do that we will move over when it is safe. BUT don’t tailgate us, don’t pass us so closely that you cause our trailer to jackknife, answer your radio when we try to call you to tell you what is happening and we will move out of your way asap. We have as much right to be on the road as you.
All well said and understood. I have often chatted to Truckies on UHF40 and let them pass, flashed our lights when they can pull back, and often they acknowledge the curtesy. They even tell you if there is a good pie shop open down the road in the late of night in a lonely stretch of road…
I wish more caravans and outback 4WD drivers would just scan Ch 40 more and watch out for each other, and trucks. They say they are on 18 or 40, but I have never heard them when needed…
Re truck drivers & Caravaners.
First thing is, before letting everyone who wants to tour with a Caravan or a Rv motorhome, get them to do a course on the trucking industry, a lot of RV drivers have never been seen a truck let alone drive one!! so they don’t always know ‘what a truck stop is’!? I have seen in parts of our country,
signs: Trucks only. do we really have to put signs up for every damn thing, for what to or not do!
Lets, use some common sense.
Hey I can get on my very high horse about lots of things regarding safety with trucks & RV’s. we all know trucks use channel 40 for their communation, channel 18 for RV’s 4×4 have channel 15, Out on the highway, why not all travel on channel 40 so we can all cll the truck driver up to let them know what your intensions are, so he know what plan instead of driving along with eyes stuck on the lines in front of you!!
If you an RV I want to call you up for any reason, ie emergency or Chat, you have your sighn on the back, Channel 40 – 18. Have i got to scramble thru channells to call if your not the one first called?
So what i’s saying is; on channel 40. if ya mate wants to call ya up, okay mate, lets go to whatever channel ya want.
To make a good RV driver is let make a few truck driving trips.
I have had my share of truck driving, naw at 79 years old I am now enjoying life on the road full time with a Toyota Coaster Motor Home.
I can stay in one place for long!
Stay safe cheerio from Bushy Peach with his missus & dog Max.
I am a Grey Nomad and also hate to see this happen. I also think that there should be a truck only sign on these sites and a fine for other road users who use them. I also think that our road authorities should also get a kick in the bum for not making more rest areas that cater for all sorts of road users. After all they have known for years that caravan and truck traffic is increasing rapidly.
We all should lobby foe better roads and better rest areas.
I’m totally in sympathy with the truckies here. They have a hard job to to do and deserve our respect. We must work together to keep our roads safe.
We drive a bus towing a small 4 wheel drive. Yes we use parking bays for 3 reasons. One we, like you, get tired and to go on is dangerous, two we are ongoing up the highway and are simply sleeping for a few hours and going on and three many caravan parks are too small and we have to take the car off the trailer and then drop the trailer, get the bus onto the site and then attach the trailer to the car and park it. All that for a few hours sleep. Sharing a site with trucks is a fact of highway life. All road users are entitled to use the parking bags. What all of us need is better and more plentiful roadside stops. I would suggest that Queensland should look at some of the WA and the NT parking bays that are much bigger with areas further off the road that most caravans can take advantage of, leaving the closer area for the larger trucks. In all our travels throughout Australia we have had very little problems with most trucks, most drivers are courteous. If we can we will call you past, letting you know when it is safe and indicating when you are past us, so you can pull in. If we can’t do that we will move over when it is safe. BUT don’t tailgate us, don’t pass us so closely that you cause our trailer to jackknife, answer your radio when we try to call you to tell you what is happening and we will move out of your way asap. We have as much right to be on the road as you.
All well said and understood. I have often chatted to Truckies on UHF40 and let them pass, flashed our lights when they can pull back, and often they acknowledge the curtesy. They even tell you if there is a good pie shop open down the road in the late of night in a lonely stretch of road…
I wish more caravans and outback 4WD drivers would just scan Ch 40 more and watch out for each other, and trucks. They say they are on 18 or 40, but I have never heard them when needed…
Re truck drivers & Caravaners.
First thing is, before letting everyone who wants to tour with a Caravan or a Rv motorhome, get them to do a course on the trucking industry, a lot of RV drivers have never been seen a truck let alone drive one!! so they don’t always know ‘what a truck stop is’!? I have seen in parts of our country,
signs: Trucks only. do we really have to put signs up for every damn thing, for what to or not do!
Lets, use some common sense.
Hey I can get on my very high horse about lots of things regarding safety with trucks & RV’s. we all know trucks use channel 40 for their communation, channel 18 for RV’s 4×4 have channel 15, Out on the highway, why not all travel on channel 40 so we can all cll the truck driver up to let them know what your intensions are, so he know what plan instead of driving along with eyes stuck on the lines in front of you!!
If you an RV I want to call you up for any reason, ie emergency or Chat, you have your sighn on the back, Channel 40 – 18. Have i got to scramble thru channells to call if your not the one first called?
So what i’s saying is; on channel 40. if ya mate wants to call ya up, okay mate, lets go to whatever channel ya want.
To make a good RV driver is let make a few truck driving trips.
I have had my share of truck driving, naw at 79 years old I am now enjoying life on the road full time with a Toyota Coaster Motor Home.
I can stay in one place for long!
Stay safe cheerio from Bushy Peach with his missus & dog Max.