While the Australian business world waited with bated breath for the Government’s proposed framework for regulating AI last week, an under-the-radar legislation that could have far more significant ramifications for fleet operators is fast-approaching.

From 1 August, the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) gets sharper (a lot sharper); safety obligations will become more explicit, fines will become steeper, and many core duties become more important. 

While it hasn’t made front page news like Anthony Albanese’s ‘AI in Australia’s Interests’ speech, it should be top of the agenda for Australian fleet operators. 

In this week’s Delivered, Helen Studley, Senior Product Manager at NowGo by Shippit, discusses the new legislation and its implication on fleet operators. 

TL;DR

• Under new HVNL laws, audits become admissible in court, ‘unfit to drive’ duties expand, and penalties are being overhauled.
• Operators shouldn’t panic, but should prepare immediately: understand the legislation and, if under its jurisdiction, audit their current operation to determine whether they’re in good shape or have work to do.
• Fleet management software won't ensure compliance on its own, but the digitisation and record-keeping may put some operators closer to being ready than they realise.

What are the new HVNL regulations?

The amended HVNL applies across the heavy vehicle sector, but one change stands out. The new ‘unfit to drive’ duty, which covers any reason (not just fatigue) a driver can't safely operate a vehicle, now extends to all vehicles over 4.5 tonnes GVM. That's a far wider net than the previous 12+ tonne threshold.

Three changes matter most: 

1. Safety Management Systems become mandatory for accredited operators, and audit findings can now be used as evidence in court, not just as an internal check.
2. The expanded fitness-to-drive duty applies broadly (as above).
3. Around 50 penalties are increasing (some doubling), with the most serious Chain of Responsibility breaches carrying corporate fines over $3 million and personal liability for executives exceeding $1 million. A further 21 minor administrative penalties are actually decreasing.

Not only are many industry commentators calling it the broadest structural overhaul since HVNL began in 2014, there is no grace period.

How worried should logistics teams actually be?

No ‘grace period’ sounds like a cliff edge. But it’s more nuanced than that, Helen says. 

“What this actually means is that from day one, operators need to be able to prove they have a safe system in place. But in terms of transitioning to new accreditation, they have a while longer to do that."

The looming deadline isn't a reason to panic. But it is a reason to prepare. 

“Operators should start looking into their existing operations to review if there are any gaps, in terms of things like concrete safety policies or ways to prove their compliance in the Chain of Responsibility. You can be fined for failing to have safe protocols in place, not just if something happens."

Could siloed knowledge become a legal risk as well as an operational one? 

Many fleets still run on traditional systems and tribal knowledge. Under the new HVNL rules, dispatchers can be personally liable for scheduling decisions. So does it change how operators should harness and store that knowledge?

“Yes,” Helen continues. “Historically, having a tenured dispatcher who knows things like tunnel clearance heights, truck weights and driver hours was a great efficiency boost."

In many fleets, that operational knowledge (think load constraints, reliable drivers, the time it takes to drive to specific postcodes, shortcuts etc) never gets documented, because it never had to be.

Before 1 August, that siloed knowledge was an operational and efficiency risk. After 1 August, it’s a legal risk too. 

“If that knowledge and those decision-making inputs aren't systematised, there's a huge risk of things slipping through the cracks,” Helen continues. 

“Plus, there’s no audit trail to prove that you considered all those things in the Chain of Responsibility to make sure that your planned work was safe."

A dispatcher's experience used to be a competitive edge. Now, if ‘their head’ is the only place that knowledge exists, it's also a single point of failure that a court could ask you to produce evidence of.

Will your old-school paper trail hold up in a HVNL audit?

From August, audits can be used as evidence in court. That means record-keeping isn’t a ‘nice to have’ from an administrative perspective, it’s a legal imperative from an HVNL perspective.

“Paper records are easily lost, have no timestamps or GPS data, and are hard to cross-reference. Again, imagine you were asked today to prove that your driver was fit to drive last Tuesday and delivered their parcels within fatigue law limits. 

There's also a material difference in the quality of the evidence itself, not just the time it takes to retrieve it.

“Automated records that can't be edited or fudged after the fact are also a much stronger piece of evidence than a paper record that could have been filled out a week later and popped into the relevant file."

What role might fleet management software play?

While new regulations with hefty fines might cause sleepless nights, the ‘uncontrollables’ that fleets worry about are usually more manageable than they look; provided their system is built to exert control.

“Maybe one in four or five logistics operators these days are still quite paper-based, which was really surprising to me. Then there are others that have been on legacy systems that have been around for 40 or 50 years. Many of those systems simply weren't designed for today's operational complexity or compliance expectations," Helen says. 

“So the digital transformation piece, away from both paper and legacy systems, is big."

That transformation isn't just about performance, cost and customer experience. It's also about due diligence, evidence, and compliance. Helen explains how NowGo, Shippit’s fleet management software, builds its own routing engine rather than licensing a third-party one.

In practice, that means modelling genuinely specific constraints, like the mixed loads NowGo has configured for customers such as Reece. But it could also be argued that a system built to handle that level of specificity is closer to demonstrating reasonably practicable steps than a generic tool or a ball of paper on the dashboard. 

Where should you start before HVNL’s 1 August deadline?

The HVNL changes aren't really asking fleets to become safer overnight. Most already run safely, day to day. They're asking fleets to prove it, with evidence that can't be lost, edited, or left in a glove compartment.

Here are a few steps to take now, ahead of the new legislation. 

1. Understand the legislation, and whether it applies to you. Read the actual scope: vehicles over 4.5 tonnes, combined weight including trailers, the roles it covers beyond drivers. Don't assume you're out of scope because your trucks look small on paper.
2. Pull your records from the last year and ask: if the HVNL audited any random week, would we have been able to provide the necessary proof?
3. List what you can produce on demand, and what you can't. Fit-for-work checks, planned routes, hours worked, load and vehicle constraints. If the answer is ‘that's in someone's head’, start there.
4. Decide what gets systematised first. You don't need to digitise everything at once, but start with whatever carries the most Chain of Responsibility exposure, usually fitness-to-drive checks and route planning, and build out from there.

For everyone still running on paper and tribal knowledge, the gap Helen's describing isn't hypothetical. It starts on 1 August. And your preparation starts at the full stop. 

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Note: This article is general information, not legal advice. The Heavy Vehicle National Law and associated penalties are subject to change, and their application depends on your specific circumstances. Shippit makes no representation that use of NowGo or any software will ensure compliance with the HVNL or any other law — compliance obligations remain the responsibility of each operator and chain of responsibility party. You should obtain independent legal advice about your obligations.