SA road freight at risk of overregulation

The South African road freight industry is facing severe operational challenges, not least of which is overregulation when it comes to safety, as well as the lack of government enforcement of compliance standards.

That’s the view of Crossroads Distribution CEO Pieter Vermeulen, who says there is a risk the industry is overregulating itself to the detriment of compliant operators. “While we’re doing what we need to do – to the letter of the law – non-compliant operators continue to act with impunity, hiring foreign workers at low rates and skimping on maintenance and fleet management, putting themselves and the public at risk,” he says.

“We’ve created an uneven playing field by overregulating, while the rules we’ve set aren’t being evenly applied across the industry, and there’s very little by way of government enforcement to change this status quo,” Vermeulen adds. His concerns echo those of Road Freight Association (RFA) CEO Gavin Kelly, who noted that the association is “closely monitoring” ongoing efforts by the Department of Transport to enforce stricter safety regulations, with particular attention to the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (better known as Aarto) and Road Traffic Management Corporation initiatives.

In his keynote address at the recent annual RFA Conference, Kelly also suggested that trucking operators were at risk of going out of business as they struggled to comply with the increasingly arduous legislative and regulatory landscape.