Cyclone Gabrielle: Daily roading jigsaw likely to last months, says freight boss

It’s going to be months and months of taking the long way round for freight companies faced with 400km of damaged roads and some communities still only reachable by air or sea.

The government has anounced $250 million of extra funding for Waka Kotahi for emergency road works, focused on getting lifeline routes open and reconnecting isolated communities.

Right now, some Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay communities are effectively islands, with little or no road access or detours that add hours onto trips.

State Highway 35 between Te Puia Springs and Tolaga Bay remains closed, SH2 from Gisborne through to Ōpōtiki is only open 7am to 7pm, and there is no direct route from Gisborne to Napier, with SH2 south of Wairoa out of action, adding hours to any round trip.

Gisborne-based freighters Eastlite Carriers manager Tamara told Checkpoint it was a daily roading jigsaw likely to last for months.

“At this stage, for us to service Ruatoria and Eastern Four Square, which is in Te Araroa, we would have to go from Gisborne to Ōpōtiki that way, State Highway 35.”

There are back would normally be a day’s work, she said, including loading and offloading the truck. That was no longer the reality.

“Cost-wise, you know, we’ve got to get accommodation over there and wages, fuel, road user [charges]. All of that adds up at the end of the day.”

Going south from Gisborne, they can only make it as far as Wairoa. Getting to Napier and Hastings is now an entire day’s drive on its own.

“We’re looking at going through Waioeka Gorge through to Rotorua, down to Palmerston North and back up to Hastings. The cost for that is extremely high and no one really wants to pay the extra cost… For us to move someone’s product, we’ve got to charge them extra, but of course they don’t want to have to pay extra either because they’re kind of losing out as well. So it’s a chain reaction.”

Drivers can legally only spend 13 hours on the road at most, including breaks.

“That will take them at least 13 hours to get there,” said Tamara. “They would pretty much be full-on driving from Gisborne to Hawke’s Bay, and that’s not getting them unloaded or reloaded for the next day – that would all have to happen the following day.

“So you’re looking at a three-day turnaround before they’re back in Gisborne again.”

That too would normally be a day trip, if SH2 was open.

“I think everyone’s facing that we need more drivers and we probably need more trucks as well… we’re probably all facing this whole big change because we don’t have a timeframe as to when they can open the road from Wairoa to Napier yet, and that’s the hard thing – we’re trying to have to find our new normality to how things are gonna work.”