What you're still responsible for when you book freight

Australian law. The Heavy Vehicle National Law is in force in the ACT, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria — not in Western Australia or the Northern Territory, though it catches their vehicles the moment they cross a border.

If your business sends goods by truck in Australia, you are a party in the chain of responsibility. The duty attaches to what you do, not to what your contract says, and it cannot be handed to your carrier or to whoever arranges the freight. It also isn't uniform across the country, which is where most people get caught.

Most businesses that book freight assume the legal risk sits with the carrier. The truck is theirs, the driver is theirs, the load restraint is theirs. That is a reasonable assumption and it is wrong.

Australian heavy vehicle law names ten parties in what it calls the chain of responsibility, and two of them are the business sending the goods and the business receiving them. The regulator's own rule of thumb is that if your business sends or receives goods by heavy vehicle, it is a party in the chain¹. No size threshold, no opt-in, no paperwork to sign.

You can't contract your way out of it

This is the part that surprises people. The duty is not allocated by agreement between the parties — you are a party because of a function you perform, not because of a job title or the words of a contract². And the duty itself cannot be transferred or delegated to another person³.

So a clause in your carrier's terms saying they accept responsibility for load safety does not move your duty. It may well matter commercially, and it may decide who pays whom afterwards. It does not change who the law is talking to.

The penalties are why this is worth ten minutes of your attention rather than a note in a file. The maximum for the most serious category of breach is over $424,794 or five years imprisonment for an individual, and over $4.1 million for a company⁴. Those figures were current at 1 July 2025 and are indexed each year, so treat them as a floor rather than a number to memorise.

The law is called national. It isn't.

This is the trap, and it catches exactly the businesses with the most complicated freight. The Heavy Vehicle National Law commenced in February 2014 in the ACT, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria — and has never commenced in Western Australia or the Northern Territory⁵. Two jurisdictions covering roughly a third of the continent run their own heavy vehicle regimes instead.

That does not mean a Perth business is outside the chain. It means the answer depends on where the truck goes: the law applies to vehicles from WA and the NT as soon as they cross into a state where it is in force⁶.

So the same business, sending the same pallets, is under two different regimes depending on the destination. Perth to Bunbury is a Western Australian question. Perth to Sydney is a chain of responsibility question the moment the vehicle crosses the border. If you ship interstate at all, assume you are in the chain and work backwards from there.

What actually changes on your side

The duty is to ensure safety so far as is reasonably practicable, and it is limited to what you can actually influence or control. For a business that sends freight rather than drives it, that is a short and specific list:

• The weight you declare. If the number you give is wrong, the vehicle can be loaded over its limit on the strength of your paperwork.
• How the goods are packed and presented. Whether a load can be restrained properly is largely decided before the truck arrives.
• What you ask for. A delivery window that can only be met by speeding or by skipping a rest break is a request the law expects you not to make.
• What you know about the site. Access, ground conditions and how a vehicle gets loaded and unloaded are things you can see and the carrier often cannot.

What Reddlaw does and does not do here

Plainly: Reddlaw performs no chain of responsibility function at all⁷. We ask for weight, dimensions and how a truck gets loaded at each end because a carrier cannot price the job without them. We do not weigh anything, inspect anything, verify restraint, or check your compliance. Nothing in booking through us moves the duty, and under the law nothing could.

This is worth saying because the opposite is easy to imply. A platform that asks you detailed questions about your freight can look like a platform that is checking something. We are not. The questions exist so the people quoting you know what they are quoting.

What this doesn't tell you

This is an overview of who the duty attaches to, not advice on whether you are meeting it. It says nothing about your specific freight, your sites, or your contracts, and it does not cover the Western Australian or Northern Territory regimes at all. The regulator publishes detailed guidance for each party in the chain, and if you move freight at any volume, that guidance and a lawyer are both better investments than a web page.

The reason to read it now rather than later is that the duty is already yours. It attached the first time you sent a pallet, whether or not anyone told you.

1. National Heavy Vehicle Regulator — Parties in the CoR. Retrieved 6 September 2026. A business that sends or receives goods by heavy vehicle is a party in the chain of responsibility; consignor and consignee are two of the ten listed parties.
2. National Heavy Vehicle Regulator — Parties in the CoR. Retrieved 6 September 2026. A business is a party in the chain of responsibility because of the function it performs, not because of its job title or the wording of its contracts.
3. National Heavy Vehicle Regulator — Regulatory Advice – The Primary Duty. Retrieved 6 September 2026. Under the Heavy Vehicle National Law, the primary duty to ensure the safety of transport activities cannot be transferred or delegated to another person.
4. National Heavy Vehicle Regulator — Regulatory Advice – The Primary Duty. Retrieved 6 September 2026. The maximum penalty for a Category 1 breach of the primary duty is more than $424,794 or five years imprisonment for an individual, and more than $4,113,837 for a corporation.
5. National Heavy Vehicle Regulator — Heavy Vehicle National Law and Regulations. Retrieved 6 September 2026. The Heavy Vehicle National Law commenced on 10 February 2014 in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria. It has not commenced in Western Australia or the Northern Territory.
6. National Heavy Vehicle Regulator — Heavy Vehicle National Law and Regulations. Retrieved 6 September 2026. The Heavy Vehicle National Law applies to vehicles from Western Australia and the Northern Territory once they cross into a state or territory where the law is in force.
7. How Reddlaw works: Reddlaw performs no chain-of-responsibility compliance function. The booking form captures weight and loading access so a carrier can quote, not to verify mass, restraint or a customer's legal obligations.