With the sight of empty supermarket shelves all too familiar to Australians, there is no disputing the importance of the work truckies like Lachie Brown do.
Mr Brown transports goods to and from some of the country's largest farms in the Northern Territory and Western Australia.
He uses a lot of diesel in the process.
"We burn a litre every kilometre, so it's not hard for me to run up 100,000 litres a year," Mr Brown said.
His business is under more pressure than ever following the federal government's announcement of an annual six per cent rise in heavy vehicle charges over the next three years.
The road user charge applies to each litre of diesel used by heavy vehicles, and Australian Trucking Association chair David Smith said the increase will have a major impact.
"Once you get to the third year we'll go from a 27.2 cents per litre road user charge to 32.4c/l," he said.
The increase was considered by those in the Infrastructure and Transport Ministers' Meetings (ITMM) earlier this month to balance the cost recovery of heavy vehicles' share of road spending and the need to minimise impacts on the industry.
"We've always taken the stance that we must pay for our fair share of road maintenance improvements," Mr Smith said.
But he called for an overhaul of the system which calculates the heavy vehicle share of the cost of roads in Australia.
The push away from diesel
Mr Smith is concerned the introduction of electric and possibly hydrogen-powered vehicles is driving the government to increase the diesel charge.
"Diesel is becoming a bit of a dirty word," he said.
"This [electric and hydrogen] technology is coming at us and [governments] understand that we need reform just to recoup that money for roads and infrastructure."
But Mr Smith does not think an increase on the heavy vehicle charge will encourage trucking businesses to move towards electric or hydrogen-powered vehicles.
"We've got to be genuine about zero emissions rather than just being driven by the road usage charge," he said.
Livestock and Rural Transport Association president David Fyfe supported the rise.
"Our association has been calling for a three per cent increase for several years because the expenditure on roads has been outstripping cost recovery for quite a while," Mr Fyfe said.
But he also worried that electric vehicles were not yet pulling their weight.
"How will they help us fix our roads?" he said.
Added cost to hit consumers
From his truck shed in Kununurra, 3,000 kilometres north-east of Perth, Mr Brown fears he will be passing this new cost on to the rural businesses that he works with.
"We've passed on a fair bit in the last three years. I don't know how much more room there is to go without pushback," he said.
"Growers and livestock stations are going to feel this, and even the end consumers, because it will really go right down the chain."
And as he prepares for another trip driving on the dirt roads of the Top End, Mr Brown hopes to see road improvements from the increased charge.
"If we were seeing changes to the regional road network I think that would be felt a lot better, but I think we're very much forgotten," he said.
The Minister for Infrastructure and Infrastructure Catherine King has been approached for comment.
