A truck pile-up on the South Australia-Victoria border could have been avoided if it wasn’t for a “kneejerk reaction” to rapidly close the border on Wednesday night, according to Paul Freestone, managing director of Freestone Transport.

The South Australian government on Wednesday announced its border would be closed to Greater Metropolitan Melbourne from midnight, resulting in a mad rush of people crossing the state lines.

Traffic was backed up around six kilometres from the designated checkpoint – as a result of the border closure – where multiple trucks were lined up.

In the early hours of the morning a truck slammed into the line-up of vehicles resulting in one dead and two injured.

Mr Freestone told Sky News despite the lack of police presence on both sides of the border, the blame cannot be pointed their way.

“What we can blame is the system,” he said.

“There was never a proper shutdown. It was done too early.

“To me it’s total incompetence. We’ve got to become a nation again, we can’t have health ministers making decisions. They’ve got no idea of logistics, they’ve got no idea of volumes of traffic on the road.

“It shouldn’t have happened, it should have been totally avoided, this has happened through a kneejerk reaction.”