Company fined $300,000 after garbage truck death

A waste disposal company in Victoria has been convicted and fined a total of $300,000 after a worker was fatally crushed by a garbage truck in 2019.

Country Cart was sentenced in the Latrobe Valley County Court after earlier pleading guilty to two charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

The company was convicted and fined $250,000 for failing to provide or maintain a safe plant and $50,000 for failing to provide or maintain safe systems of work.

The court heard that in April 2019, the garbage truck driver was collecting bins when he arrived at a property in Leongatha South and got out of the cabin to open a front gate.

Despite engaging the parking brake, the garbage truck rolled forward and crushed him against the gate.

Following the incident, a VicRoads inspection found the garbage truck to be unroadworthy due to several major defects, including a faulty parking brake and being overdue for all required services.

The court found Country Cart failed to maintain the parking brake in a condition that would hold the truck stationary in all circumstances.

It was also reasonably practicable for the company to have provided and maintained a system of work to ensure the truck was kept in a roadworthy condition without defects.

The death highlighted the terrible human cost of failing to follow the most basic of workplace safety procedures, said WorkSafe Victoria acting executive director of health and safety, Kelly Harris.

“A thorough maintenance program and rigorous inspection of heavy vehicles are absolutely critical to protecting the health and safety of not only your workers but other road users and members of the public,” Harris said.

“We are still seeing too many preventable work-related fatalities on our roads and WorkSafe will continue to take strong action against employers not doing everything they can to control the known risks.”