July 14, 2026 — 7:00pmA Victorian truck driver who accidentally melted $70,000 worth of ice-cream has failed to regain his job despite the fair work umpire finding it was a one-off mistake and that he was not given procedural fairness by the company.On Monday, the Fair Work Commission ruled the linehaul truck driver, who worked for ERH Refrigerated Transport, was not unfairly dismissed after making an error which cost the company more than $100,000.A truck driver has been dismissed after failing to correctly set and check the temperature of a trailer of ice-cream.Marija ErcegovacThe driver, who had completed about 600 similar trips since 2022, collected a load of ice-cream from a New Cold cold storage facility in the Melbourne suburb of Truganina late last year, but had not set the temperature of the trailer to the correct level.During the trip to Wagga Wagga – the first leg of a delivery bound for a customer in Sydney – the temperature of the trailer was supposed to be set at minus 22 degrees, but was set at closer to 0 degrees.The entire back and forth trip gave the driver six opportunities to check the temperature of the trailer, but the error was only corrected by ERH’s night manager remotely at 1am the next day, 15 hours after the driver had collected the ice-cream.By then, the load had defrosted and had to be written off and disposed of. ERH gave evidence that the value of the load was $73,796 and that the cost of disposing of it was about $30,000 given it was a commercial amount of food.ERH pulled the driver into a meeting five days after the incident and told him his employment would be terminated immediately. He also received a payment in lieu of notice.The driver said he had set the temperature at the correct level but couldn’t explain why it “didn’t take”.Fair Work commissioner Damian Sloan said there was no basis to suggest that the refrigeration unit was faulty because the night manager was able to remotely adjust the temperature settings.“Even had [the driver] attempted to set the temperature correctly, he cannot have checked the temperature during the trip,” he said. “It is clear that he failed to do so.”While the driver claimed during his hearing that the rear trailer doors would not shut properly and required maintenance at Truganina, the commissioner did not give much weight to that evidence.“First, [the evidence] was raised for the first time at the hearing,” he said. “Second, it says nothing about the fact that the trailer had not been set to the correct temperature. Third, had the doors to the trailer been open [during the maintenance work], one would expect the temperature in the trailer [which was tracked] to increase.”The driver had previously received a warning in 2025 when ERH alleged he had driven a truck from Wagga Wagga to Melbourne with a load when it was meant to be empty and failed to inform the company.While Sloan said that demonstrated the driver’s employment with the company was not blemish-free, he said it related to different conduct and was not of particular significance.He noted that while the driver was informed of the reason for his dismissal, the company had already decided to dismiss him before asking for an explanation.“To give an employee an opportunity to respond after a decision had been taken to dismiss them would be like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted,” Sloan said. “By the time of the meeting … the horse had bolted.”However, the commissioner said the driver’s inability to explain what had happened during that meeting meant it was unlikely the decision to dismiss him would have gone another way, and that there was a valid reason for the driver’s dismissal.“The events of that day were effectively a ‘one-off’,” he said. “Even so, however, the consequences of [the driver’s] dereliction of duty were foreseeable. They resulted in significant loss for ERH.”The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.Millie Muroi is the economics writer at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. She was formerly an economics correspondent based in Canberra’s Press Gallery and the banking writer based in Sydney.Connect via X or email.From our partners