FTW and TFR’s Mzimela track down missing DAL box

A recent “lost container” story had a happy ending thanks to FTW’s intervention. According to Roger Philip, Johannesburg branch manager of DAL Agency, one of the shipping line boxes went missing on September 29. It had been railed out of the Port of Durban bound for City Deep on a specific wagon number, the line was informed. “But, when that wagon number arrived at City Deep,” Philip said, “it wasn’t our box on top of it.” And, despite looking for it all round the country, TFR failed to find it for a month. At least until FTW came on the scene on October 20 and talked to Maria Mzimela at TFR in Durban – who is an extremely helpful contact of the line and other operations which contract the railways to move their boxes between the port city and City Deep. She was utterly desolate about this lost box and the fact that it was an operational glitch somewhere within TFR that was the cause. Mzimela immediately promised that the search would go on, and she would report back any progress to FTW. Only a day later, on October 21, she phoned FTW to let us know that they thought the box was in the Gabcon container depot in Botswana. “We’ve got them physically checking there right now to see if they can find it,” she added. And less than two hours later she phoned back. “Good news,” she told FTW. “They’ve got it. “We are arranging to rail it back to City Deep, where they can expect it to arrive next Monday or Tuesday.” But that was not all. Mzimela told us that TFR management had been made aware of the operational problem. “We should be able to take care of the problem once and for all,” she said.