Safety and Compliance
About the program
About NTI’s Spilt Milk Program
Spilt Milk is an NTI project funded by the Federal Government through the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator’s (NHVR) Heavy Vehicle Safety Initiative.
Throughout 2022 and 2023, NTI will work with drivers, fleet managers and consignors in the dairy supply chain to design and deliver a program that aims to reduce the frequency of dairy tanker crashes through:
- Workshops
- Onboarding resources
- Online supporting material
The dairy industry is a significant contributor to the Australian economy, producing $4.4 Billion of milk each year, and is a key export commodity worth $3.4b yearly.
NTI data shows on average dairy tankers are 2.4 times more likely to be involved in a major crash than other freight transport. That’s the equivalent of one in 17 dairy tankers compared to one in 41 other heavy vehicles. The dairy industry has a history of excellent, but isolated initiatives to improve the safety performance of milk tankers. Our aim is to bring together all key stakeholders, expertise and initiatives, to deliver whole-of-industry solutions to this whole-of-industry issue.
A dairy tanker has unique engineering and physical attributes that make rollover indicators difficult for even an experienced driver to predict. By the time the driver feels the trailer rolling, it's already too late. This poses significant risk to the safety of dairy tanker drivers, other road users and the general public. Potential outcomes include, but are not limited to:
- Potential catastrophic injuries or loss of life.
- Environmental damage from spilt milk and/or diesel.
- Traffic congestion during incident recovery and clean-up.
- Increased costs to the supply chain which ultimately result in higher costs to consumers and a less competitive export product.
- Loss of public confidence in trucking safety.
