Commercial road freight regulation in SA: what a mess!
Commercial road freight regulation in SA: what a mess!
The rules and regulations governing the movement of road freight in South Africa are decidedly messy, writes NICK PORÉE.
Internationally, various regulations are issued that provide standards for commercial transport operators. These are defined by multinational bodies, such as the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and International Air Transport Association (IATA), in regions such as the European Union, or national organisations such as the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) in the United Kingdom. The prerequisite for accreditation is evidence of competence and registration to enable performance monitoring.
In South Africa, the intention was to introduce this for road freight transport in 1985. It was called the Road Transport Quality System (RTQS), but implementation by traffic authorities derailed the process. Instead of registering operators, the system registers vehicle owners, or their “proxies” (via Form ALV), which, in most cases, is simply the name of the clerk who has been sent to do the registration but has no authority or responsibility for the operation of the vehicle.
Enforcement: a cat and mouse game
The result is that we have no register of operators; anyone who can hire a vehicle and driver can operate commercial transport on public roads. This means that standards of operation range from excellence to total incompetence, with no means of identifying specific operators. Enforcement is a cat-and-mouse game, with a lot of scope for collusion and corruption, as the eNatis system does not provide details or linkages between operators and their vehicles and drivers. This precludes the monitoring of operator performance and promotes a culture of non-compliance.
Lack of Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) driver-training standards means that drivers are trained and tested on unloaded “toy” vehicles, using the K53 driver test, by inspectors who could not themselves drive a modern long-haul combination and are then “qualified” to drive fully loaded interlinks and passenger coaches without further training. The Professional Drivers Permit (PrDP) is a total waste of time and money, as it is simply a bureaucratic process that has nothing to do with professionalism as a driver.
When the system was designed in 1984 it was intended to include professional training and certification through courses with real vehicles and professional instructors. This level of training is now only found in the training divisions of large companies. The recent change to regulations extending the requirement for PrDP to smaller vehicles is equally illogical and futile.
CoR is worthless
It has been reported that 60% of vehicles are defective, and as any operator will tell you, with vehicles doing 100 000 km per year, the annual Certificate of Roadworthiness (CoR) inspection is about as effective in controlling vehicle condition as changing a baby’s nappy once a year. The frequently disastrous road safety incidents evoke plenty of pious concern by officials but no remedial action.
The Road Traffic Management Corporation was established with a 10-point mandate, none of which has been achieved in nearly 20 years of existence; road safety data is conjectural; and provinces are forced to perform their functions with outmoded and largely inadequate facilities, staffing and equipment. The regulation of commercial freight transport in South and Southern Africa is in need of an overhaul by professional industry experts instead of legal officials with minimal understanding of the practical implications of regulations or the unintended consequences of defective legislation.
This is also necessary to curb the sporadic issue of impractical and unworkable road transport legislation, which is gazetted and then ignored. For example, the consignor-consignee regulation is totally impractical. As one frustrated weighbridge manager said: “When an overloaded vehicle from Zimbabwe is in transit to the Durban port, must I notify the mine in Zimbabwe, the container terminal in Durban or the consignee in Shanghai?”
Enter the high cube debate
Expecting multiple operations to comply with the paperwork is just absurd, with some operations processing a vehicle every five minutes. A further legal irritation to the industry is the ongoing 16-year hassle over increasing the maximum permissible height of vehicles and loads from 4,3 to 4,6 metres to accommodate transport of high cube (HC) containers.
After about 10 years of moratoriums on prosecution, and more than 50 million HC moves with no incidents, the latest Department of Transport initiative is to try to move HC containers to the railway. This despite the fact that the railway does not have any capacity to do so and, in any case, every container has to move by road to rail as there are no depots with rail connections. The current moratorium ends in June 2021, but it will have to be extended to avoid total chaos in the import-export trade, which is already under pressure, with the fruit export season requiring large numbers of HC reefer containers.
There is also a need to review the vehicle load regulations in the National Road Traffic Act (NRTA), as they contain archaic and illogical standards. The front axle load of 7 700 kg is derived from the Tredco manual of 1976 for two 1100 x 20 cross-ply tyres at 480 kpa but is still the standard 30 years after cross-ply tyres disappeared from the road. Axle load limits are designed to protect the roads, but it is illogical that six-axle combinations are permitted at 9 000 kg per axle but seven-axle combinations only 8 000 kg!
Should Regulation 237 be revised?
The limitation is due to a historical attempt to protect the railway from competition, an objective that has no current relevance as there is now no competition for transport of breakbulk cargo. Revising Regulation 237 would reduce the cost of long haul transport without any impact on roads other than a slight reduction in vehicle numbers. The bridge formula was revised in the NRTA to support the 56-tonne limit but is illogical, as a loaded 6×4 tipper with a gross of 26 tonnes with a 3,6-metre wheelbase has a “footprint” of about 7 tonnes per linear metre on a bridge, whereas a 56-tonne x seven-axle interlink imposes about 3 tonnes per linear metre. Simplifying the regulations to a uniform 9 000 kg Legal Axle Massload (LAM) would eliminate a large amount of the “overloading” currently recorded.
All of these issues and more are covered in the Road Freight Strategy that was approved by Cabinet in May 2021, but it is clear that there is no real intention to implement the recommendations. SADC is supposedly developing harmonised standards for transport in the 26 tripartite countries but is also silent on the abovementioned legal issues which are now being “exported” around the
region.
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