Easter chaos revives call for holiday truck ban

THE KNOCK-ON effects of a total ban on trucks on SA roads at long weekends would be “horrendous”, according to Gavin Kelly, technical and operational manager at the Road Freight Association (RFA). This followed a proposal made on a national radio station last week that a ban be introduced because heavy vehicles were being blamed for slow-downs in traffic movement on the Durban- Gauteng N3 highway on Easter Monday. “It all sounded so easy,” said Kelly, “but the economic impact would be massive. “Obviously it would introduce a broken link in the logistics supply chain, and just create serious problems before and after the long weekend.” And it’s not as though the roads are stacked with heavy commercial vehicles during these holiday periods. “A lot of truckers try to phase the scheduling of their deliveries to ease the number of trucks being used on these long weekends,” said Kelly. Kevin Martin, MD of container transport company, Freightliner, agreed. About 6 0%-70% of normal heavy traffic is off the roads on these long weekends, and what’s there is there because of “bare-ass necessity”, he told FTW. “At the end of the exercise,” he added, “a lot of companies close down for holidays, and transport needs go down to a bare minimum." The only heavy vehicles on the roads are obviously needed, he suggested, like emergency services and delivery contracts which can’t be shut down (like coal for power stations), and, of course, the movement of goods which are needed to tide things over for the long weekend. “A truck ban sounds like an easy answer for holiday travellers,” Martin added. “But what would these same holidaymakers say if they arrived in Durban to find no bread, milk or newspapers in the shops because of the shutdown in transport.” Implementing such a ban would also be a bit like forcing the government to cut off its nose to spite its face, according to Mike Scott, transport director of the major long-haul road transport company, Cargo Carriers. “It would have an extremely detrimental effect on the economy as a whole,” he said. What, for example, Scott asked, about the build-up of imported goods at the Port of Durban. “If you took out four days at Easter just think of the massive backlog that would be created. At the same time, who would accept liability for possible demurrage charges if goods couldn’t be moved out on time?” It is government which owns and operates the ports, Scott added. “And, if it is decided to introduce a national ban on truck movement, who is going to have to do it? Government, that’s who! “That’s a bit like asking them to shoot themselves in the financial foot, forcing the authorities to do something to their own economic and operational disadvantage.” The arguments are similar to those raised by the RFA, when road freight operators were warned last year of a likely three-month restriction on their activities around the 2010 Fifa World Cup – to give preference to travellers. At the time, Sharmini Naidoo, chief executive of the RFA, said that the implications of a three month restriction on road freight traffic were enormous for the road freight and other industries, in addition to the economy. The same thing could be said about the rather ludicrous proposal now being made to slap a ban on heavy road transport over long weekends, Kelly added.