The country’s biggest road freight body wants the next Government to create a Minister of Supply Chain, arguing that nobody in Wellington is currently accountable for whether goods actually move from one end of New Zealand to the other.
National Road Carriers Association released its election manifesto, The Freight System New Zealand Needs, on Thursday morning. The association represents 1,500 member companies operating about 16,000 trucks, and it puts the value of the freight sector at $59 billion a year, with demand forecast to grow 55 per cent over the next two decades.
The new portfolio is the first of six asks. NRC chief executive Justin Tighe-Umbers says responsibility for the freight system is currently scattered so widely that no minister owns the result.
“Roads sit with one minister, rail with KiwiRail, ports with councils, workforce with Immigration, and energy with another portfolio,” he says.
His argument is that Australia, the United Kingdom and Singapore each line up three things that New Zealand does not, being a single minister responsible for the supply chain from end to end, a government department whose reach covers the whole system, and a coordinating body with a mandate to bring government and industry together. New Zealand, the manifesto says, aligns none of them.
That is a pointed claim in a year when the cost of moving things has been front of mind. Tighe-Umbers says freight costs make up about 12 per cent of the price of goods on supermarket shelves, which is the link the association is trying to draw between a fairly technical governance question and the weekly shop.
“Everyone from businesses through to everyday New Zealanders have felt the pinch in their pockets. The freight sector has an indispensable role to play,” he says. “From fruit and vegetables, to appliances, and construction materials, every sector of New Zealand’s economy depends on the freight system.”
The association is not starting from nothing. In October 2025 Transport Minister Chris Bishop announced an Action Plan for Freight led by NZTA, the reinstatement of the National Freight Demand Study, and a Freight Advisory Council of industry figures convened by the Secretary for Transport. NRC welcomed those decisions at the time and says the next Government should build on them rather than start again.
Starting again is in fact the second complaint in the manifesto. It says New Zealand spends in the top 10 per cent of the OECD per person on infrastructure yet sits in the bottom 10 per cent for what it gets out the other end, and that ending the cycle of projects that start, stop and change with each government would move money from consultants into construction. The association wants the Freight Advisory Council and the Infrastructure Commission jointly tasked with working out which investments across road, rail, sea and air shift the most freight for each dollar.
The third ask is about truck rules. New Zealand writes its own vehicle standards rather than adopting proven international ones, and the manifesto says changing them can take years.
“In the meantime, our freight operators can only watch as the world adopts bigger, safer, and more efficient trucks,” Tighe-Umbers says. He points to Finland, which the association says cut national transport costs by 4.4 per cent over four years off the back of a single change to mass limits. Applied to New Zealand’s $59 billion freight bill, NRC calculates that would be worth $2.6 billion. The manifesto also warns that international shipping lines are moving quickly to 38 tonne containers, which would be too heavy for most trucks permitted on New Zealand roads.
Fuel is the fourth ask, and it is the one with the most political heat behind it. NRC puts the extra diesel cost carried by New Zealand since the Iran war began in February at more than $1.5 billion.
“Any significant shock to our fuel supply chain, whether that is a geopolitical event, future pandemic, or natural disaster, could stall our freight supply chain in weeks,” Tighe-Umbers says. The association wants more onshore storage capacity alongside support for the shift to low and zero emission heavy vehicles, and says it is working with the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority on that transition. Members NZ Post, WM New Zealand and truck rental firm TR Group are named as the operators furthest down that road.
The Government has already moved some way on storage. Fuel importers have been under a minimum stockholding obligation since January 2025, currently 28 days of petrol, 24 days of jet fuel and 21 days of diesel held onshore or in transit, with the diesel figure due to rise to 28 days from July 2028. Budget 2026 put $150 million into additional strategic reserves with a further $450 million set aside as contingency, and the strategic diesel reserve at Marsden Point went live in July, adding roughly nine days of cover. Whether that is enough is exactly the argument the manifesto is trying to start, and it lands the same week that diesel prices at the pump began climbing again.
The last two asks are about safety and people. NRC says a Transport Service Licence is too easy for an operator to get and too hard to lose, and it wants the kind of chain of responsibility rules Australia uses, where the freight owner, the forwarder, the operator and the end customer all carry some obligation for compliance rather than the cheapest quote simply winning. Tighe-Umbers cites the death of roadworker Johnathan Walters, run over in May 2024 by the unroadworthy truck of an operator who he says kept working despite many breaches.
“The system needs to identify and attach consequences to operators who create risks,” he says.
On workforce, the manifesto says the average New Zealand truck driver is 57 years old and the share of young New Zealanders joining the industry is shrinking fast. NRC wants truck driving recognised as skilled work with a migration pathway to residency.
“The truck driving labour pool is international and mobile, and we are struggling to attract qualified skills to our shores,” Tighe-Umbers says.
None of the six asks has been picked up by a party yet. With the general election set for 7 November and advance voting opening on 26 October, industry groups have a narrow window to get their asks written into somebody’s policy before campaigning proper begins. If you want to see where the parties currently sit on transport, infrastructure and the cost of living, our voting tool lets you compare them side by side.
Do you think freight deserves its own minister, or would a new portfolio just add another layer to an already crowded Cabinet table? Let us know in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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