Massive delays for trucks at Durban port

It was another damaging time for the Port of Durban last week as the average staging time for trucks at Tower 202 – one of the three serving the Durban container terminal (DCT) at Pier 2 – went out from its normal 50 minutes to five hours. And, to add insult to injury, said Gert Viviers of Roadwing and representative of the SA Association of Freight Forwarders (Saaff), according to information from a range of different companies that can be translated to up to 12 hours in practice. And this led to serious delays to truck movement right back up the line for the five days up to the FTW copy deadline on February 13. The cause was construction work that started last year. “Our task team’s original plan was to create six additional parking bays at 202, which were put in on January 2,” Viviers told FTW. “But now, a lack of equipment and just too many containers being allocated to 202 have led to this latest situation.” However, in agreement with the task team, Transnet Port Terminals (TPT) is going to serve only road-hauled containers at 202, while the rail-hauled will be allocated exclusively to the other two towers. At the same time, they are to deploy more machines at 202. Viviers hoped that this would relieve the undue pressure on the tower and overcome the problem. INSERT 5 hours Average staging time for trucks at Tower 202.