TFR service – a catalogue of woes

So much for the
government’s policy of
encouraging cargo to move
from road to rail, according
to prominent members of
the freight industry.
“It’s just impossible to rail
things,” said Margrit Wolff,
MD of Buffalo Freight, “ask
anyone in the industry.
“Until they sort out the
mess they’ve got Transnet
Freight Rail (TFR) into, we
just can’t rail it.”
And another, but
anonymous, member of the
freight forwarding sector
agrees with the description
of a “mess”.
“What Transnet always
fails to mention is the
problems that regular cargo
attracts – granted which are
not all their fault,” she said.
To highlight these varied
TFR problems, our source
forwarded only a few of
the e-mail communications
she had received recently –
indicating various problems
that were slowing down the
speed of cargo movement
around the country.
“These are a few,”
she said. “Let’s not even
mention strike action and
acts of God.”
A primary problem, our
contact pointed out, is that
many ships leave Durban
short-shipped – regularly
listed by Transnet Port
Terminals (TPT) in its daily
port reports.
And, in notifying clients
of this situation, Transnet
and its railway arm TFR
come up with e-mail
communications like:
“Attached list of export
volumes ex CDP (City
Deep) terminal that may
‘Arrive late’ based on the
high export volumes in the
terminal. Take note that the
numbers might be impacted
(increased) even further
should we have incidents
on the network and CDP
terminal.”