Hauliers lash out at Sapo’s ‘misleading’ stats

‘Vehicles wait up to four hours to get in’ ALAN PEAT THERE WERE loud howls of derision from the container trucking industry following SA Port Operations’ (Sapo) announcement last week that average truck turnaround at the Durban container terminal (DCT) had been reduced from 45-50 minutes in 2002 to a current average of 20-25 minutes from gate-in to gate-out. “The figures they give are a load of crock,” said Clifford Blackburn, MD of International Delivery Company (IDC). “They let a truck in - and then speed it through the system and claim to have made great strides in bringing down the time. It is a false representation of the facts.” He accepts the “gate-in to gate-out” element. “But,” said Blackburn, “that doesn’t take into account the anything up to four hours your vehicle can be standing outside waiting to get in.” It’s all manipulation of the statistics to make Sapo and the DCT look good, he added, but ostrich-like burying of heads in the sand when it comes to answering the overall problem of serious vehicle delays. Craig Trickett, owner of Truckit, is also up in arms. “All very well talking about 25-minutes gate-to-gate,” he said, “but not much use when your truck is sitting in a queue back to the Bayhead Road for 2-3-hours. “And, after lunch-time, it just gets worse.” Paul Botha, director of Yellow Jackets, told FTW that it was no problem inside the terminal - “Except when their computer goes down, or you get caught by a shift change,” he said. But sitting in a queue up to three kilometres long before you get there is a monumental problem. “All that it’s doing is shifting the problem outside,” said Botha. And he doesn’t see it being a big exercise to overcome. An adjustment of the road access layout and control could go a long way to resolving it, according to Botha. “In addition, beef up the gates with computer terminals of their own to give control of the system.” But all three agree that Sapo blowing its statistical horn is misleading transport users in the industry. “You try telling your customers that you’re late because your truck was held up for four hours at DCT, after they’ve read these 25-minute figures,” said Trickett, “and they’ll never believe you.” And it’s not their imagination, the truckers added, with Blackburn telling FTW that he has recorded proof of the delay times to his container rigs. Also, to prove what he says, Trickett has volunteered to compile figures on his fleet times at DCT for a week - and submit it to FTW as evidence.