DoT won’t budge on hi-cube moratorium

The minister of transport,
Dipuo Peters, has made it
clear that there will be no
further extension of the current
moratorium on truck height
restrictions that is due to end
on January 1, 2019.
And, said Sue Moodley,
MD of Transport.com and
chairman of the Durban
Harbour Carriers’ Association
(DHCA): “At a meeting last
week with John Motsatseng,
deputy director-general of the
department of transport, we
tried to present a motivation
on why the moratorium should
remain. Also, we emphasised
that fleet owners would have
to incur huge costs to change
their fleets – and the industry
in its current tender state just
can’t afford it.”
Moodley also put forward a
case for a ‘grandfather clause’
to be included in any regulation
that demanded that new 1.25-
1.3-metre trailers should be
used to replace the current
trailer fleet.
“We pointed out that this
was the only practical way for
such a law to be financially
feasible,” she said. “This being
that trailers built after that
January 1, 2019 deadline
should be 1.25-1.3m-high rigs.
But that the old trailers could
continue hauling hi-cubes until
they became obsolete
“But he didn’t seem to be very
interested, and saw no sense of
urgency about our appeal.”
The DoT argument is that
the current 1.5-1.6-metre
trailers hauling hi-cubes make
for an unstable load; are too
high for warehouses and for
fuel station roofs; and that,
when roads are resurfaced,
they will be heightened – and
hi-cubes are then likely to hit
bridges.
But these arguments are
described by the trucking
industry as “out-of-date
dogmatism”.
The Road Freight
Association (RFA) has
presented independent reports
that prove conclusively that
stability is no longer a problem.
Also, over the past 30 years,
almost all warehouses have
been built or redesigned to take
the 6m height of the present
trailer/ hi-cube combinations,
and fuel stations are all built
to afford up to 6m clearance.
As for the road resurfacing
argument, the truckers once
again rejected it. It was
pointed out that the standard
practice, when resurfacing a
road, was that the old tar layer
was scraped off and recycled
for further use. So there is no
increase in height.
Added to this is the fact that,
in those old days, hi-cubes
were an exception rather than
the rule. But now, almost
100% of the 40-foot (12m)
containers entering the country
are hi-cubes, and none of the
predicted dire consequences
have taken place. And no
container manufacturers in the
world are now making standard
40ft general purpose (GP)
boxes. They are all hi-cubes.