Shipping & General has
introduced four superlinks,
five days a week, which are
dedicated specifically to the
transport of less than container load
(LCL) shipments.
“The transport of LCL shipments
out of Durban unpack depots
has seen massive growth over
the past two years and we have
increasingly seen that clients are
clearing their groupage consol
containers and electing to transport
their Johannesburg destined
consignments by road, on the
premise of a strict overnight door-todoor
delivery,” MD Regan Moodley
told FTW. A comprehensive range of
local feeder vehicles and staff are on
standby from sunrise daily to load
these shipments and deliver them to
importers, he said.
Moodley is upbeat about growth
on the Durban-Gauteng route, with
‘favourable’ volumes over the past
year. The company moves in excess
of 1 200 TEUs per month on the N3
highway, he told
FTW. “We have also
secured our own
rail account with
Transnet Freight
Rail, enabling us
to offer a merchant
road haulage service
out of the City Deep
terminal for all
containers being
railed to the Johannesburg-based
terminal,” he said. “With shipping
lines increasingly citing local cartage
as non-core, we are quickly filling
this void.”
He said that this was different
from the somewhat controversial
trend to unpack full, cleared
containers in Durban and the
subsequent road haulage of
containers as breakbulk freight
to Johannesburg. “Clearing and
forwarding agents often opt for
this in an effort
to save the empty
redirection costs
imposed by
shipping lines,”
said Moodley,
adding that if one
calculated the costs
of cross-haulage in
Durban, as well as
the costs to unpack,
it was not cost-effective.
“The Durban unpack concept
is really only viable when clients
consolidate their payloads from
multiple containers and then
maximise the payloads by using fewer
trucks to transport the shipment,”
he said.
INSERT & CAPTION
Currently moving in
excess of 1 200 TEUs
per month on the N3
highway.
– Regan Moodley
