The SA trucking community
is up in arms about a letter of
intent from the department
of transport for a proposed
reduction of permissible axle
mass from 9-tons per fourwheel
axle to 8-tons on the
secondary road system.
This to move commercial
vehicles on to the primary road
network, and preserve SA’s
secondary road network, most
of which, said the department,
has “reached a stage of
disintegration”.
There is also a plan to
encourage goods transport
to move from roads to rail
branch lines. It is the intention,
said the DoT, “to prohibit
the transportation of certain
commodities on both the
primary and secondary road
networks, and the migration of
the same to rail branch lines”.
The DoT is living in a dream
world, according to a Durban
trucker. “This was devised
by somebody sitting behind a
desk, and not in touch with the
commercial realities of the land
transport industries,” he said.
Roads should be built and
maintained to be able to take
the loads using them, he added,
not by devising a haphazard
plan to save road surfaces and
move cargoes from road to rail.
A plan which, he reckoned,
would only add significantly to
overall transport costs – with
all the inflationary elements of
such an event.
Gavin Kelly, technical and
operations manager of the Road Freight Association
(RFA), said the association
was “totally against” this
departmental proposal.
“This for two reasons,”
he told FTW. First, it will
affect the overall vehicle
payloads, “requiring a rush of
extra trucks on the roads to
distribute the same amount
of goods”.
“More trucks,” said Kelly,
“and a higher cost-per-ton
to move the goods will only
increase transport costs, and
therefore the cost of all the
goods carried, and push up the
end-prices of goods on-theshelf
to consumers across
the country.
“It’s funny that they stress
goods-carrying vehicles,”
Kelly said, “when buses have a
mass limit of 10.2-tons on the
four-wheeled rear-axle.
“What does more damage –
an illegal-to-be nine-ton axle
on a truck carrying goods or a
legal 10.2-t on a bus carrying
people?”
There is also a serious
contradiction in government
policy-thinking. According
to Barney Curtis, executive
officer of the Federation
of Southern African Road
Transport Associations, the
protocol of the Southern
African Development
Community calls for a
harmonisation of permissible
axle masses (amongst all the
other vehicle specifications)
amongst the member states.
And the figure chosen was
10 tons.
The problem is that the
SA minister of transport has
signed this agreement, and
with this latest proposal to
drop the SA axle mass the
department will be shooting
the minister’s agreement in
the foot.
“A 10 tons harmonised mass
across the SADC region,”
said Curtis, “but not in South
Africa – where the new
proposal suggests 8-tons.
“This is completely
unacceptable. We recognise
that there is damage to the
roads, but feel that this
proposal is just a political ploy
to move things to rail.”
All the questions that
are being asked, like what
commodities are going to be
banned from what roads, need
to be answered before another
move is made.
Hauliers slam DoT’s axle mass reduction proposal
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