J & I Container Depot to open staging pen A CITY Deep container park has come up with an innovative idea to streamline collection and delivery of containers at container depots for long-distance truckers.
The brainchild of J&I Container Depot m.d. Robert Nell, the idea is to offer transporters a holding pen for their boxes.
Nell explained: When the transporter arrives in the City Deep hub, regardless of which depot his container is destined for, he can offload it at J&I and we will arrange the cross-haulage to the nominated depot and pass on any documentation to the relevant company at a nominal fee.
Essentially we will be finishing off the job for him, allowing him full utilisation of his vehicle which can now continue on to the next job. Nell also intends to create overnight living quarters and ablutions for truckers, which will be available 24 hours a day, as long as some advance warning is given.
A number of depots don't cater for after-hours deliveries. Our service is geared for the transporter. We will fetch new containers for him and keep them at the depot until required or arrange to deliver boxes to other depots. Obviously the POD (proof of delivery) will play a vital role in the whole exercise. Truckers are sometimes caught in long queues, waiting up to five hours to deliver their boxes. This is time which could be better spent on the long-distance route. The company's fleet is capable of handling 6m and 12m empty containers. But if there's a demand for FCLs (full container loads) we will adapt to the market, says Nell.
J&I Container Depot was established nearly three years ago as a nominated Transamerica container depot. A second depot, J&I Container Depot II, was opened recently as a storage area for containers not yet off-hired by Transamerica. This is the area which will be further developed as a transit hub.
