Chain of Responsibility, in plain words
Chain of Responsibility means that if your business has any influence over a heavy vehicle transport task, you share legal responsibility for its safety. You do not have to own the truck or employ the driver. The law asks one thing: do everything reasonably practicable to make the transport activity safe, and be able to show it.
Who is in the chain
Under the Heavy Vehicle National Law, you are a party in the chain if you employ or engage the driver, schedule the work, consign or receive the goods, pack or load them, or manage the premises where loading happens. Most councils, utilities, builders and manufacturers are in the chain without thinking of themselves as transport businesses.
Executives carry a separate due diligence duty: officers must actively verify that the business has, and uses, the right resources and processes. For the most serious breaches, penalties run into the millions of dollars for companies, and individuals can face imprisonment.
What the duty requires in practice
The standard is "so far as is reasonably practicable", the same idea as work health and safety law. Nobody expects a guarantee. Regulators expect working systems for the risks you influence:
- Speed and scheduling. Delivery windows and rosters a driver can meet without speeding or skipping rest.
- Fatigue. Work and rest planned and recorded, breaches picked up and acted on. See the fatigue guide.
- Vehicle condition. Daily checks, defects fixed before they become incidents, maintenance on schedule.
- Mass and loading. Loads within limits and properly restrained. See the heavy vehicle rules guide.
The question you must be able to answer
After an incident, the investigation question is not "did you have a policy" but "was your system actually working". The answer comes from checks and data captured as work happens:
| Risk | What shows the system works |
|---|---|
| Vehicle condition | Completed pre-start checks, failures escalated, defect-to-repair trail |
| Fatigue | Work diary records, rosters, breach follow-ups |
| Mass | Weighbridge or loading records, documented limits per vehicle |
| Speed and scheduling | Journey history, schedules that reconcile with drive times |
If those checks only exist on paper in glovebox folders, they can decay or disappear. Capturing them digitally during normal work is the practical difference between a defensible position and a scramble. See CoR and fatigue checks in the platform.
Chain of Responsibility is a duty on your business. Software can capture checks and show follow-up actions, but it does not transfer the duty. This guide is general information, not legal advice.
The CoR self-check
Ten questions a party in the chain should be able to answer yes to.
- We have identified which of our activities put us in the chain.
- Executives receive and review transport safety reporting.
- Delivery schedules are built against realistic drive times.
- Every heavy vehicle movement starts with a completed pre-start check.
- Failed checks block or escalate automatically, and we can prove it.
- Defects found are tracked through to completed repairs.
- Driver work and rest records are kept and reviewed for breaches.
- Mass limits per vehicle are documented and checked at loading.
- Contracts with transport partners address CoR duties.
- We could give an investigator the checks, reports and supporting files for every item above.
Official sources
Last updated 10 July 2026. General information, not tax or legal advice.