Welcome to our new correspondent

Hentie van Jaarsveldt, known to many in the road tanker arena, has joined the ranks of FleetWatch's correspondents as our specialised correspondent on Dangerous Goods. Born in Knysna in 1957 where he completed his schooling, Hentie then went on to the Cape Technicon and the University of Stellenbosch where he studied Mechanical Engineering. He later completed his Diploma in Road Transport at Rand Afrikaans University where he achieved best student and best student overall over three years and then studied Senior Management Development at the University of Stellenbosch. 

His work history includes doing an eight year stint with the permanent force of the SA Navy as an engineering officer following which he spent six years at General Motors as a product design engineer and then six years at Caltex as fleet engineer. He then moved back into the manufacturing sector spending 12 years at Tank Clinic as technical director and managing director. Over the past three years, he has been a specialist consultant in road tankers running his own company called Anfos Consulting.

In his role as a consultant, he is involved in the development of specifications and procedures, training and development of audio-visual training aids, tanker inspections and audits, incident investigations, procurement and commissioning of road tankers for clients, development and management of maintenance systems, to name a few of his areas of responsibilities.

He also serves as a member of the RFA Dangerous Goods Committee as well as a member of STANSA (the former SABS) technical committees and working groups concerning Dangerous Goods standards.

On the personal side, he is married to Annelie and has two children, Eduan (24) and Anja (23). His outside work interests include photography, birding, music (playing and listening), indigenous gardening and, of course, wine.

FleetWatch welcomes Hentie on board and we look forward to many years of him disseminating information for our readers in the all important Dangerous Goods sector of this industry. In this, his first article for FleetWatch, he highlights the chaos currently dominating in the legislative arena. I urge readers to take their time in reading this article and to study it carefully as he goes into great detail in sketching the background to the points he is making - and in doing so, doesn't pull his punches either. Way to go Hentie. Let's keep on trucking!