Economies across the world depend on the trucking industry to maintain fast delivery times and deliver products safely to their respective destinations. And if you look around you, one could even say that the trucking industry handles much more cargo than trains, ships or planes without trucks, goods could never travel from rail yards, ports and airports to their final destinations. One could even dare to say that if the trucking industry stopped rolling, economies would grind to a halt. Such is the importance of commercial vehicles.

And yet, it is these vehicles that often face the brunt when it comes to environmental concerns and alarming pollution levels. Across the country, various state transport ministers are cracking down on heavy commercial vehicles and refusing to be lenient when issuing fitness certificates to commercial vehicles. Raipur, for instance, will not allot permits to trucks running for more than 10 years and will give the owners a time period of one year to buy new vehicles for registration. In doing this, they are keen to implement the concept paper floated by the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways for its proposed voluntary vehicle fleet modernisation policy that aims to take off the old polluting vehicles (vehicles older than 11 years) off road.

THE RELIANCE ON ROAD TRANSPORT SHOULD BE MINIMISED AND EMPHASIS GIVEN TO OTHER MODES OF TRANSPORT.