Father Xmas may not be visiting SA this year...

DJ...

DJ...

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I just received this by email now from a very reliable source, following yesterday's debacle with trucks being impounded and imports being held by customs:

Tell Junior that there won’t be any delivery by Father Christmas this year…..

The movement of any truck carrying an international ISO standard “high cube” container has been banned by the Department of Transport with immediate effect.

This has been eagerly implemented by the Road Traffic Inspectorate (RTI) at Mkondeni near Pinetown in KwaZulu-Natal. Notwithstanding the fact that the world trades with these containers, never mind numerous proposals and requests from Business Unity South Africa, merchants and importers in general, freight forwarders whose business is the facilitation of freight worldwide – and sound reasoning from the Road Freight Association (RFA) arguing against the “huge safety risk” myth and the financial burden to the country a badly-timed equipment change will bring – government has once again used the “Vacuum Model” to distil policy decisions.

As we speak, trucks are being impounded by the RTI – causing major delays in the port, opportunities for criminals to fleece containers and vehicles, increasing traffic congestion and threatening the delivery of much-needed goods over the December Festive Season.

Even better, the RTI (whose main function is to see that transport flows freely and safely for all road users – including dealing with road traffic law offenders) has now instructed the MEC not to issue abnormal load permits as “operators are abusing the system”.


Interesting that the very structure responsible for ensuring the law is kept has decided to restrict the powers of the MEC and has effectively brought the movement of freight to a stop (at least 50% of all containers that move through the ports are of the new high cube design – and this percentage grows annually). Trucks that don’t have the abnormal load permit are also being impounded - despite a moratorium on this being agreed to.

Until recently there was a “Moratorium” on prosecutions in this regard due to several representations made to various authorities – mostly requesting that proper research be done regarding the issue of high cube containers, followed by a properly thought-out plan (should the decision be reached not to increase overall height with regard to these containers).

Up to this week road freight operators were granted abnormal load permits to allow the movement of high cube containers. “It appears that the RTI has rescinded on the agreement we had”, says the RFA’s spokesperson Gavin Kelly. “Some of our members have been told that no new abnormal load permits will be issued by the Kwazulu-Natal DoT, on instruction from the RTI. How can the prosecutorial arm of the DoT give such an instruction? This is a conflict of interest – and of great concern to the RFA. The RFA has not been consulted about this, nor has it even been officially informed of the sudden change”.

“The Road Traffic Act states that the MEC is allowed to issue permits for containers that fall outside of the standard sizes”, continues Kelly. “Why has this practice changed overnight? And on what grounds?” In 2007 the RFA successfully lobbied the DoT to fund research on the impact of the exceeding of the 4.3m maximum height by high cube container transporters. To date however this research has not been done. “How can the DoT unilaterally decide to block the movement of high cube containers without having done research beforehand?” asks Kelly.

On following this up with the national DoT, the RFA was informed that the reason for the current state of affairs is the implementation of TRH 11 (“The Conveyance of Abnormal Loads”). “The proposed date of implementing the TRH11 has never been communicated to industry”, says Kelly. “Some KZN officials have reportedly told operators to adapt their equipment (ie. Trailers) for transporting these containers. Obviously these individuals are not aware of the realities of trucking operations. Changes that need to be made to vehicles cannot happen overnight”.

Kelly warns: “Right now operators are being fined and vehicles impounded – with the instruction to remove the container onto a legal trailer - which for all intents and purposes does NOT exist on South African roads (especially due to the TRH 11 guideline document, which rules out low bed type trailers, which are in the main AV abnormal registered equipment). There are currently over 50 vehicles standing at one weighbridge alone. No reasonable operator will now transport high cube containers under the present ruling – as an operator will now incur a fine and have equipment impounded – with little or no alternative equipment available to legalise transport. The timing of implementation also leaves much to be desired.”

Under these circumstances operators are being advised by the RFA to refuse to transport high cube containers.

“The consequences to the economy and the non-delivery of goods are dire”, Kelly concludes.
Click to expand...

Basically government has rushed through legislation banning an international standard of transport (and might I add popular and beneficial to the economy), against advice of practically all experts. What this means is that imports are costing thousands of rands (in some cases hundreds of thousands of rands) extra to transport to distribution centres, shops and warehouses throughout the country, if at all. It is ridiculous! It merely serves to increase the cost of goods in the shops at a time when we need to be stimulating the economy, and risks some items not being stocked at all, acting as a liability to companies already hit by massive import duties and at a time of balance sheet tightening.

And to top it all off, it's silly season on the roads and the government has single-handedly, significantly increased traffic congestion between Durban and the rest of the country in one foul swoop. Well done, twits - great timing.

Still, there is no reason given for this, apart from the fact that the government is making a fortune in fines, even though these goods were usually shipped +- 105 days ago, and the department did not communicate this until the last minute. It's entrapment and theft imho...:mad:

F.U. Mr Ndebele...
 
Welcome to Africa's next disaster zone.

Africa shows us one thing but i won't say because it will be considered racist :D.
 
DJ... said:
Basically government has rushed through legislation banning an international standard of transport ...
Click to expand...

From what I can tell they are not banning a international standard of transport, the issue is not with the containers. The issue is with the trailer load beds that are to high for these containers. The high cube containers can be up to 76cm higher than the normal containers this could have several safety implications, higher center of gravity & height clearance are two things that come to mind.

As far as I can tell you get trailers with lower load beds & uprated tyres to accommodate for these higher containers.
 
ponder said:
From what I can tell they are not banning a international standard of transport, the issue is not with the containers. The issue is with the trailer load beds that are to high for these containers. The high cube containers can be up to 76cm higher than the normal containers this could have several safety implications, higher center of gravity & height clearance are two things that come to mind.

As far as I can tell you get trailers with lower load beds & uprated tyres to accommodate for these higher containers.
Click to expand...

Yet they've banned the use of the trailers required to transport high cube containers afaik. Or they had at some point. Reading it back, it's just not feasible to expect an entire fleet to be changed given the time-frames involved. And the safety aspects have been disputed aggressively by the RFA. It's just another taxation...
 
DJ... said:
Yet they've banned the use of the trailers required to transport high cube containers afaik.
Or they had at some point.

Reading it back, it's just not feasible to expect an entire fleet to be changed given the time-frames involved.

And the safety aspects have been disputed aggressively by the RFA. It's just another taxation...
Click to expand...

Not form what I understand, they have not banned the trailers, you can still use those trailers for the normal 2.438m heigh containers.

Agreed but what were the time frames and how long has the industry known about this?

Obviously the RFA will dispute it, they represent the financial interest of the carriers and could care less about the interests and concerns of those outside the body.

More information will probably come out into the open in the near future as things are not always as they seem.
 
Yes, it's not banned - my error. However the timing and manner in which this has taken place is pathetic. My company is struggling to deal with the problems this has caused...
 
Unfortunate

ponder said:
More information will probably come out into the open in the near future as things are not always as they seem.
Click to expand...

Stru

However the way everything is going of late tends to make one jump to conclusions and drop into generallities.

It would appear that no-one understands the importance of timing -- except for Napoleon --- and even he got it wrong in the end.


MW :cry:
 
http://www.ddl.co.za/press_jul-2008.htm

This website gives a nice breakdown of what the problem is.

But i still don't understand how this can be problematic on the roads as in this document, http://geometricdesign.csir.co.za/PdfDocs/Chapter10.pdf, they mention that the max permissible height for a double decker bus is 4.6m.

So flat deck trailers with HC containers on it would still come in at less then that if you take a trailer height of 1.6m and the HC container at 2.9m.
 
ponder said:
From what I can tell they are not banning a international standard of transport, the issue is not with the containers. The issue is with the trailer load beds that are to high for these containers. The high cube containers can be up to 76cm higher than the normal containers this could have several safety implications, higher center of gravity & height clearance are two things that come to mind.

As far as I can tell you get trailers with lower load beds & uprated tyres to accommodate for these higher containers.
Click to expand...

See you on the KZN Coast, so you may or may not agree, but from a purely selfish point of view, I'd be quite happy with this if it meant not having to endure yet ANOTHER truck has overturned / lost its load / jack-knifed /broken down traffic jam which are so frequent on our roads here (Daily :mad:) and create absolute havoc with our economy as well!
 
garyb01 said:
See you on the KZN Coast, so you may or may not agree, but from a purely selfish point of view, I'd be quite happy with this if it meant not having to endure yet ANOTHER truck has overturned / lost its load / jack-knifed /broken down traffic jam which are so frequent on our roads here (Daily :mad:) and create absolute havoc with our economy as well!
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Would be nice, yes. But it won't. In fact it just further increases truck traffic on the roads over the silly season. It's counter-intuitive...
 
cheese_za said:
But i still don't understand how this can be problematic on the roads as in this document, http://geometricdesign.csir.co.za/PdfDocs/Chapter10.pdf, they mention that the max permissible height for a double decker bus is 4.6m.

So flat deck trailers with HC containers on it would still come in at less then that if you take a trailer height of 1.6m and the HC container at 2.9m.
Click to expand...

HC containers can be up to 3.2m high. 3.2+1.6=4.8m

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_freight_shipping_container#Description
Taller units have been introduced including 'Hi-cube' or 'high-cube' units at 9 feet 6 inches (2,896 mm)[2] and 10 feet 6 inches (3,200 mm) high[citation needed].
Click to expand...
 
ponder said:
Not form what I understand, they have not banned the trailers, you can still use those trailers for the normal 2.438m heigh containers.

Agreed but what were the time frames and how long has the industry known about this?

Obviously the RFA will dispute it, they represent the financial interest of the carriers and could care less about the interests and concerns of those outside the body.

More information will probably come out into the open in the near future as things are not always as they seem.
Click to expand...
From what I've read elsewhere it's probable they've known about the requirements for quite a while. I wouldn't be surprised if they did nothing, counting on slack or non-existent enforcement. They've also been given the option to sit down and map out routes they can use, but they also have to provide a timetable for conversion of their trucks.
 
Trucks cause too many problems and accidents on our roads. We should move back to a rail system.

Everyone is on about how bad taxi drivers are but in actual fact the truck drivers are the worst drivers. They muscle their way in front of cars and use their sheer size. Many of them are overloaded and in semi roadworthy condition as the owners push them to get more money. Even nice new looking trucks like the modern Volvo trucks are actually often in a state of disrepair under neath all the nice looking new and fancy covers. All becuase the owners take chances with maintenance.


I have spent time on the roads and have seen it first hand. Why must we feel sorry for them greedy ones now when they have to answer to the law like everyone else?
 
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