KEY POINTS:
Mt Maunganui truck company owner Charles Brown is so infuriated at the Government's decision to raise road-user charges, he is sending eight trucks to this morning's protest.
"I've never protested anything in my life before," the 57-year-old said. "The reason I'm doing it is because of the arrogance
of the Government. They do not understand normal New Zealand people, working people, how it's actually affecting their incomes, their livelihoods. They've got no idea."
Mr Brown owns Bay Hi-Ab Transport, a medium-sized firm specialising in crane trucks. Eight of his drivers will join a two-hour protest in Tauranga as part of nationwide action against the raising of road-user charges on diesel vehicles.
He said the action would cost him $110 per hour per truck, but he considered it necessary.
Mr Brown employs 12 drivers, all with families, and said the increase to the road-user charges came on top of a year of dramatic jumps in fuel prices.
"I've got drivers out there that need a pay rise. How can I give them a pay rise when everything around me in my business is rising, totally spiralling out of control?"
He said compliance costs were also increasing and though he understood high fuel prices were a worldwide problem, he believed the Government was purposely doing nothing to tackle the issue ahead of this year's election.
"My personal belief is that the Government knows they're dead and gone and buried ... Basically they're just making it that much more difficult for when National gets in. National are going to have a hell of a job for the next three years."
Mr Brown said he was fortunate to have a specialist business and to have loyal clients.
A veteran of almost 28 years in the trucking business, he had not wanted to pass on the increased fuel costs to his clients and had borne them himself for a year. But on June 1, he raised his rates, saying the increase in road-user charges would now force him to raise them again.
"I will stay [in the business] but I also believe that eventually the bigger companies are going to swallow up the smaller companies like myself." "
He also feared the implications of the increased road-user and fuel costs for the country as a whole.
"New Zealanders are hard workers, we're entrepreneurs. We can do anything with a bloody bit of number eight wire," Mr Brown said.
"But you just can't keep on pulling the money out of, whether it's my business or the wage packet. You just can't keep doing that. You have to have something to bloody live on. You still have to have money to invest."
ROAD-USER CHARGES
* You must pay road-user charges if you own a vehicle powered by a fuel other than petrol or a vehicle with a manufacturer's gross laden weight of over 3.5 tonne. Previously, all vehicles under 4 tonne paid the same rate.
* Road-User Licences for a light diesel car now costs $36.07 per 1000km (up $3.24), for a vehicle over 3 tonne it now costs $37.71 per 1000km (up $4.92).
* The revenue collected from road-user charges goes into the National Land Transport Fund and Regional Land Transport Funds for road upkeep.
