Donald and Patricia Logan look on proudly as they meet their great-granddaughter Olivia for the first time, just six weeks after the little girl was born prematurely.

However, the touching image is now the last photo ever taken of Donald and Patricia Logan, who were killed just hours later on January 24, 2012, when drug-addicted truckie Vincent George veered onto the wrong side of the Hume Highway at Menangle, killing them and their son, Calvyn.

As George was sentenced to a non-parole period of almost 13 years on Friday, surviving son Gary Logan spoke for the first time about his parents' final day and the ongoing anguish his family deals with as a small segment of the trucking industry continues to flout the rules.

"It's not just the deaths of these three people you love but it is also the way it happens," he said. "You go through the nightmares of waking up at 2 in the morning, thinking of them being crushed to death by a monster truck, thinking about what their final seconds may have been."

After visiting baby Olivia in Canberra, Calvyn had arranged to drive his parents back home to Forster on the mid-north coast. They left in the morning and were due to stop at Gary's home in Campbelltown for lunch along the way.

A little after their expected arrival time, Gary started calling. He texted his brother several times, the last being sent at 5pm. By chance, his phone flicked over to the Sydney Morning Herald website and he saw an image of a flattened red Ford Mondeo, instantly thinking it must be his brother's.

He turned to his wife and remembers uttering the words: "Something terrible has happened."

By midnight, he was identifying the bodies of his parent and only sibling in a morgue.

The deaths of the Logans sparked an unprecedented crackdown on the trucking industry in NSW, leading to the formation of a joint police and Roads and Maritime Services taskforce that has since conducted 78 operations, particularly targeting illegal tampering of speed limiters.

In two years, the discovery of speed limiters that have been tampered with has fallen from 25 per cent to 10 per cent of trucks inspected, a RMS spokeswoman said. However, police fear the message still isn't getting through.

Three weeks ago, an operation by the joint taskforce on the Hume Highway, not far from where the Logans died, found 29 of 211 speed limiters inspected had been tampered with.

"It's extremely concerning that there is continued tampering with speed limiters – a practice that is both dangerous and illegal," Assistant Commissioner John Hartley said.

Judge Stephen Hanley said in the Downing Centre District Court on Friday that it was "only a matter of time" before George killed someone. On the day he killed the Logans, he had driven for 22 hours with just a 4 ½ hour break, was speeding, and had self-administered an extraordinarily large dose of illegally obtained methadone. His logbook had been falsified to show that he was resting at the time when he crushed the Logan's car. "I drive that road most days and I'm constantly reminded of it," Mr Logan said.

Since the triple fatality, authorities have widened their focus to "chain of responsibility" legislation targeting those further up the line.

It's cold comfort for the surviving Logans including Gary, Calvyn's widow Ines and his sons, Shane (Olivia's father), Robert and daughter Natalie. "It's as if our lives hit the pause button on January 24, 2012," Gary said. "We couldn't move ahead, we couldn't make plans, we couldn't really think about anything. I suppose now we feel as if we can let the pause button off. People call it closure. I don't personally like the word closure, because it's never over, but I guess that's what people mean by it."

smh.com.au