WESTERN Australia's livestock transporters are "busy moving their livelihood out of their own districts," according to Livestock and Rural Transporters Association of WA president David Fyfe.
Mr Fyfe said it was "OK being busy" but he had concerns that "we're carting sheep that would normally go two years from now".
"Transporters are making hay while the sun shines and will worry about it (not having stock to transport) later.
"The dollar value is so good that producers are getting the money now and worrying about the rest later."
The sheep are being offloaded from farms across WA that are trying to manage the "critical" level of water and feed, while taking up the good prices on offer by Eastern States buyers.
Nine water deficiencies have been declared by the State government across the Wheatbelt and Great Southern regions to assist livestock producers - with the government carting water to local storage tanks for easier access.
Mr Fyfe congratulated the government on its efforts to assist "stressed" producers who were operating costly programs.
He said seeing the water storage tanks in place was a huge relief for farmers "reliant on the weather".
Mr Fyfe said transporters were delivering the sheep to feedlots for abattoirs, Eastern States restockers or processors or for live export vessels.
"It's a busy time for us and operators are making a fairly good living out of it but the worrying thing is that we are carting away our future," Mr Fyfe said.
"In Lake Grace they are so short of water they are unloading breeding stock.
"When they send breeding ewes east they never come back.
"My guess is there's about 6000 head of sheep per day going east (at the moment), but I have no way of knowing other than what the Ceduna Checkpoint declares.
"As far as farming for the future - have they got a back-up plan?
"What are they going to do for sheep?
"I guess forward thinking people will work out a way."
More than 400,000 head of sheep were transported from WA to the Eastern States last year - the highest number since 2010.
Mr Fyfe said the LRTA was concerned mostly for the "small operators in country towns" who were relying on livestock transport for a living.
"We are hoping to find some kind of system like the Farm Management Deposit scheme for transport operators who are exposed at times like the live export ban,'' he said.
"The LRTA has started to appeal to the Federal government.
"I recently was fortunate to secure a meeting with the Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenburg to put forward the case.
"We were pleased to be able to meet with him and present it to him.
"Nothing has happened but they are listening, and anything can happen."
Mr Fyfe said with a system in place it could help "when you hit a bad time or year, cause you've already got the problem solved".
"They could have used it during the live export ban," he said.
Mr Fyfe said it was sometimes difficult for small transport operators in regional areas to diversify their businesses, and it was also hard to find other work to fit around the work they did have.
