High hopes for resolution of high-cube crisis

It was a great Christmas present for the SA container road transport industry, as the KwaZulu Natal traffic authorities called off their extensive blitz on vehicles carrying high-cube containers (with a travel height of 4.5-4.6-metres) from December 23. Prior to this, the KZN traffic cops were busy pulling high-cube carrying trucks off the road, impounding them, and slapping fines on the operators. This threatened to put offending operators out of business, and the only answer at the time, truckers told FTW, was for them to refuse to haul the offending loads. But that doesn’t mean that the overall problem has been nationally cured. Not that this would be too big a problem, according to Peter Newton, director of Seaboard, and a well-known Cape-based commentator on transport matters. “The height limitation is embedded in the regulations,” he told FTW, “not the Road Traffic Act itself. “So, we are told, the minister of transport has the power to change/amend the regulations without having to debate the matter in parliament.” But, he added, attempts via the DoT to have him do so have not been successful to date. And it would require no major sort of word juggling in the regulations. “As we’ve repeatedly pointed out,” said Newton, “all we need is for the regulation to be amended by the insertion of two commas, and three words, viz: “double-decker buses, and iso containers, not exceeding 4.65-m”. “Then all our problems in this context would be over. But the 64-dollar question is: When?” In a sense the crisis, which has arisen in the past couple of weeks (and is so far restricted to KZN) is a good thing, he added. “It has brought to a head (with all the attendant publicity) a matter which has been festering for years.” And Gavin Kelly, technical and operations manager of the Road Freight Association (RFA), has distinct hopes that this issue could soon be up for high level discussion between road transport and freight industry bodies and the DoT. “First,” he told FTW, “we are trying to put together a meeting with the other business associations in the industry – in an attempt to put our thoughts on the matter together as a unified argument. “The department has been talking about a meeting with the interested parties in the private sector early this year. And we are seriously trusting that this promise will be fulfilled, and a meeting will be held, we hope at ministerial level.”