Easter chaos revives call for holiday truck ban

THE KNOCK-ON effects of
a total ban on trucks on SA
roads at long weekends would
be “horrendous”, according
to Gavin Kelly, technical and
operational manager at the
Road Freight Association (RFA).
This followed a proposal
made on a national radio
station last week that a ban
be introduced because heavy
vehicles were being blamed
for slow-downs in traffic
movement on the Durban-
Gauteng N3 highway on
Easter Monday.
“It all sounded so easy,”
said Kelly, “but the economic
impact would be massive.
“Obviously it would
introduce a broken link in the
logistics supply chain, and just
create serious problems before
and after the long weekend.”
And it’s not as though the
roads are stacked with heavy
commercial vehicles during
these holiday periods.
“A lot of truckers try to
phase the scheduling of their
deliveries to ease the number
of trucks being used on these
long weekends,” said Kelly.
Kevin Martin, MD of
container transport company,
Freightliner, agreed.
About 6 0%-70% of normal
heavy traffic is off the roads
on these long weekends, and
what’s there is there because
of “bare-ass necessity”, he told
FTW.
“At the end of the
exercise,” he added, “a lot of
companies close down for
holidays, and transport needs
go down to a bare minimum."
The only heavy vehicles
on the roads are obviously
needed, he suggested, like
emergency services and
delivery contracts which can’t
be shut down (like coal for
power stations), and, of course,
the movement of goods which
are needed to tide things over
for the long weekend.
“A truck ban sounds like
an easy answer for holiday
travellers,” Martin added.
“But what would these same
holidaymakers say if they
arrived in Durban to find no
bread, milk or newspapers in
the shops because of the shutdown
in transport.”
Implementing such a
ban would also be a bit like
forcing the government to
cut off its nose to spite its
face, according to Mike Scott,
transport director of the major
long-haul road transport
company, Cargo Carriers.
“It would have an
extremely detrimental effect
on the economy as a whole,”
he said.
What, for example, Scott
asked, about the build-up of
imported goods at the Port of
Durban.
“If you took out four days
at Easter just think of the
massive backlog that would
be created. At the same time,
who would accept liability for
possible demurrage charges if
goods couldn’t be moved out
on time?”
It is government which
owns and operates the
ports, Scott added. “And, if
it is decided to introduce
a national ban on truck
movement, who is going to
have to do it? Government,
that’s who!
“That’s a bit like asking
them to shoot themselves in
the financial foot, forcing the
authorities to do something
to their own economic and
operational disadvantage.”
The arguments are similar
to those raised by the RFA,
when road freight operators
were warned last year of a
likely three-month restriction
on their activities around the
2010 Fifa World Cup – to
give preference to travellers.
At the time, Sharmini
Naidoo, chief executive
of the RFA, said that the
implications of a three month
restriction on road
freight traffic were enormous
for the road freight and other industries, in addition to the
economy.
The same thing could
be said about the rather
ludicrous proposal now being
made to slap a ban on heavy
road transport over long
weekends, Kelly added.