THE DEFINITIVE TRUCKING SITE

October 2008

When Joe Citizen thinks of traffic officials the first thing that springs to mind is a negative response to what could be punishment in the form of a hefty fine or even a spell behind bars. For truckers, this is invariably the case too. And they have weighbridges to deal with on top of it. However, there are many positive projects underway under the sponsorship of South Africa’s traffic ordinances, most notably in KwaZulu-Natal where the Department of Transport (KZN DoT) has helped induce a remarkable turnaround in the sugar supply chain and now is about to establish its own driver training academy to service the commercial transport arena, writes Paul Collings. 

	With RTMS rules in place, consignors have to load correctly to stay legal and in business.

THE SUGAR INDUSTRY in KwaZulu-Natal provides livelihoods to millions of people with some 42 000 individual plantations providing 22 million tons of sugarcane loads for some 1400 trucks in the province every year. These vehicles undertake 885 000 loaded trips per 32-week season. 

“That equates to around 50 million kilometres per year, or 1250 circumnavigations of the globe (or 5 circumnavigations per day),” says Chris Stretch, Manager: Freight Directorate, KZN Department of Transport. “With sugar playing such an important role in the economy of the province, the DoT found it necessary to move away from a ‘strictly enforcement’ position to one where we joined hands with all the stakeholders in the industry to overcome the problems we were jointly facing.” 

Sweet results
The major bugbear for the KZN DoT was the problem of overloaded vehicles, causing road damage and accidents. “The solution came in the form of the Load Accreditation Programme (LAP), which is now called the Road Transport Management System (RTMS). This self-regulation system has helped us reduce overloading by 50 percent in two years,” says Stretch. “Achieving buy-in from all parties was difficult at first but now we have buy-in from all the mills and transporters are beginning to realise the cost benefits of the RTMS approach.” 

Through a very active project steering committee, the process involved extensive skills and technology dissemination to educate and train growers and transporters how to load correctly. “With multiple load sensing mechanisms at their disposal, sugar cane transporters are able to carry more using fewer vehicles. This has made our roads safer and improved efficiency at the same time,” Stretch explains. 

With help from benchmarking and supply chain improvement specialists, Crickmay and Associates, Stretch’s department has undertaken a massive electronic project to enable near realtime access to data generated at mill weighbridges. “The system identifies hauliers and growers and by individually assessing each vehicle, has data sets of specific load capacities for every individual cane-carrying vehicle, from trucks to agricultural tractors and trailers. This has enabled onsite vehicle assessment and virtually eradicated the use of vehicles unfit for the job,” he says.

Paving the way
The data generated from the system helps pin-point idiosyncrasies in the supply chain and effect corrective measures before they get out of hand, says Stretch. “We estimate that road damage costs the industry in excess of R10-billion per annum in vehicle operating costs, which is why we’ve implemented a focused mobile weighbridge strategy to curb overloading that occurs off the major corridors. We have also embraced the Performance-Based Standards (PBS) approach to vehicle design, carefully monitoring the two abnormal-length test rigs operated by Sappi and Mondi. 

It was a risky political move on our part but with diesel prices seriously undermining transport operations, a solution that can deliver an 18 percent reduction in transport costs has to be a good thing.” 

In October, the KZN DoT will launch  the first public driving academy for commercial operators. “It will give trainee drivers the necessary theoretical and hands-on practical training to be fully competent to drive safely and efficiently. Whether it’s helping an entire industry improve its efficiency or creating a skilled driver pool for the truck and bus industries, the KZN DoT always looks for a win-win situation,” Stretch concludes.