Assessment of Vehicles for the transport of Hay and Straw

This report supersedes two previous RIRDC reports (Di Cristoforo and Sweatman 2003 and Di Cristoforo and Sweatman 2004). Since the publication of those reports, state transport agencies have requested further work to satisfy emerging requirements for the assessment of heavy vehicle safety using Performance Based Standards (PBS). This report details the background and socio economic impact of hay loading practices, and then describes two components of physical testing and one component of computer simulation.

The objective of this work is to provide one report with all the research to date that gives the fodder industry and state road transport authorities the fundamental research information to use in the development of reforms to the hay and straw transport regulations in Australia.