Ia Ara Aotearoa Transporting New Zealand

In July I joined a panel at the New Zealand Cargo Owners Council AGM to discuss building freight resilience in an uncertain world. It was a multi-modal panel representing rail, shipping, and ports.

I like engaging in these discussions because it’s a great opportunity to better understand what matters to other parts of the supply chain.

The first part of the conversation recognised that our supply chains are pretty resilient, albeit more often a result of reactive, rather than proactive measures and risk mitigation controls. Consider the earthquakes in Christchurch and Kaikōura, COVID, and more recently the volatility with fuel; by and large we’ve come through...

The 32nd update in May presented some interesting shifts from earlier reports. The most significant change was a surge in concern for petrol and fuel prices.

In the October 2025 report, “petrol / fuel prices” ranked 14th. In February 2026, it ranked ninth, and then moved up to fourth place in May.

The ranking for transport / public transport / infrastructure did not change quite so drastically – going from 13th, to 16th, to 12th in October 2025, February 2026, and ...

Transporting New Zealand was proud to support Road Safety Week from 4-10 May, held by the Brake charity.

The initiative is especially important for our sector because the road is the workplace for over 30,000 truck drivers and many others working in transport. In 2024 alone trucks, buses and light commercial vehicles collectively travelled over 14 billion kilometres. We want...

There’s nothing like seeing a bunch of Kiwi athletes with some nice, shiny medals at an Olympic Games.

After all the hard work, all the physical and emotional endurance, all the support of friends and families, it’s a magical thing. Even to get to the Olympics is such an enormous achievement.

Back on the less elevated level of day-to-day life, our industry has been having some decent wins, and business as usual continues at pace.

Late July we had an historic day at our organisation with the Board formally adopting a new constitution and governance structure.

The new constitution introduces a single national membership structure, supported by r...

The state of the economy is top of mind this month, following the delivery of the budget by the coalition government on May 30. The government says it can turn around the economy. We hope it is right, and we will see some positive changes happening soon.

Stress on the rise for operators

Right now, however, it is clear that we are facing tough economic times, as predicted, and unfortunately this is impacting the road transport industry in particular.

A major player went into liquidation recently with absolutely no warning. A recent report in Stuff described how the transport industry is leading the statistics for insolvencies – disqu...