Road hauliers started the week on tenterhooks, as they awaited word from the Department of Transport (DoT) on the contentious high cube height restriction, due to be implemented on January 1, 2019.
When this issue went to press on Monday morning, the DoT had not yet revealed its plans regarding Regulation 224 (b) of the Road Transport Act which restricts the height of a high cube container to 4.3m when carried on a standard trailer. Harbour Carriers’ Association chair Sue Moodley was cautious to predict what the DoT would announce, save to say that “things were at a sensitive stage”.
Her predecessor and principal resistor of the regulation, Freightliner Transport CEO Kevin Martin, was much more frank. “For the first time there’s a real sense that the DoT understands the urgency of this matter and we’re all hopeful that they’re going to come to their senses. Either they do the right thing or they’re going to kick the can further down the road.”
Echoing his disbelief that the DoT was still hanging onto the 4.3m height restriction that will effectively rule out the use of high cube containers, Council for Supply Chain Management Professionals chair, Mike Johnston, said sooner or later “they will have to let it go”. Particularly at issue is the paradox of a regulation serving to improve road safety yet inadvertently paving the way for transporters to tamper with trailers in a bid to lower load levels and thereby still be able to freight high cubes.
Addressing a crisis meeting in Johannesburg before locking heads with DoT delegates in Durban last week, Martin explained that he had first-hand evidence of desperate transporters doing everything from removing weight distribution plates and the 5th wheel from their trailer couplings, to fitting smaller tyres.
Going to such lengths to lower a trailer’s level “is a disaster waiting to happen,” Johnston said. “You can cut and weld and do all kinds of things but you have to think about the weight that’s involved versus the speed and momentum that’s created.” Altering the structural integrity of a trailer for the sake of complying with a safety regulation at all costs could have the exact opposite result. “It’s a very dangerous game. Someone’s going to get hurt if that happens.”
Martin said that should the DoT fail to acquiesce to industry’s clamour, the local freight fraternity would have no alternative but to use international pressure on local policy makers. “If we don’t hear from the department by next week Friday (today, 12 October), we’ll have no alternative but to take matters to the next level.”
Council for Supply Chain Management Professionals chair, Mike Johnston.
