Truck Week 2026 was filled with BBQs, depot open days, school visits, industry showcases, and community celebrations right around Australia.
But among all the activity, one message carried particular weight:
Your body is your prime mover – service it.
The Truck Week men’s health initiative – Personal Preventative Maintenance (PPM) – used the national celebration as a platform to encourage more people across the heavy vehicle, freight and logistics industry to take control of their own health destiny.
Delivered collaboratively by Heavy Vehicle Industry Australia, Healthy Heads in Trucks & Sheds, Australian Skin Cancer Foundation, Get Yourself Checked and SiSU Health Group, the campaign was built around a simple but practical message: your body is your prime mover – service it.
The five-point preventative maintenance check focused on heart health, skin checks, bowel screening, prostate health and mental health – encouraging people to think about preventative health in the same practical way they think about maintaining equipment.
Importantly, the initiative was never designed to lecture people or overwhelm them with statistics, even though the health data across the industry is confronting.
Instead, the goal was to make these conversations feel practical, accessible and normal.
Because the reality is, many of the people most in need of the message are often the most resistant to hearing it.
That made industry ambassador Geoff Crouch’s willingness to publicly share his own health journey especially important during Truck Week.
“It’s not a badge of honour to say that: ‘Oh, I don’t go to doctors, I haven’t been to a doctor in years,’” Geoff says.
“That’s not a badge of honour. That’s a death warrant.”
It is a striking line, but it lands because it speaks directly to an attitude many in the industry recognise. Stoicism and resilience can be strengths – but they can also become excuses for delay, denial or unnecessary risk.
Geoff is equally blunt about the myths that still surround men’s health.
“Blokes are terrified of the dreaded finger up the bum; there needs to be education,” he says. “It’s a blood test, people!”
That matters because prostate cancer remains one of the most common cancers affecting Australian men – but outcomes improve dramatically when it is detected early.
Truck Week became the canvas for taking those conversations directly to the industry.
Throughout the week, health activations and free checks were delivered at BP truck stops, industry events and workplaces including Marulan, Eastern Creek, Beresfield and TruckShowX in the Hunter Valley.
The campaign reached drivers, workshop staff, operators, warehouse workers and office teams in places where they already were – truck stops, depots, conferences and community events.
And success was never going to be measured simply by numbers.
If someone booked a GP appointment they had been putting off, checked their blood pressure, completed a bowel screening test, booked a skin check or started a conversation about mental health, then the initiative achieved something meaningful.
The heavy vehicle industry understands preventative maintenance better than most.
A small issue dealt with early can prevent a major breakdown later.
The same principle applies to people.
Truck Week may now be over, and the campaign will quieten down for a while, but the mission remains unchanged.
We simply want to encourage more people across Australia’s heavy vehicle industry to take control of their own health destiny.
Because Australia relies on this industry every day. And this industry relies on healthy people.