A Refreshing APPROACH

The benefits of operating legally far outweigh the so-called short term profits derived from overloading. So says Kevin Martin, chief, planning and control of Durban-based Freightliner Transport who, in this article, sketches out the refreshing approach adopted by his company to solving the vexing problem of overloading. It provides great food for thought.

With the advent of the Bayhead Road weighbridge in Durban, many local harbour transport operators were exposed to legal load/distribution requirements for the first time in Durban harbour's history.

Many of these transporters were single truck owner operators who had been abused for years by certain role players in the local shipping industry. While many excelled as drivers, they were, in general, poor businessmen and ignorant in the main with regards to legislation requirements and more importantly, the reason for those requirements. The poor condition of much of their equipment bore testimony to this abuse brought on by poor prices and ignorance.

With the advent of the weighbridge, unfair competition brought on by unrealistic pricing due to overloading started to disappear. However, the legitimate transporter was also being caught for load distribution problems within sealed container and the local industry was very vocal about this "unfair profiteering" by the authorities. I was one of the most vocal but on complaining to my mentor, I was told: "Be part of the solution. You are a professional, deal with it."

Once I started to apply my mind to the problem, it soon became apparent that the local fleets are, by and large, technical dinosaurs! With this realisation, instead of wanting to circumvent or change the law, we looked for solutions available within the existing laws. And we found that solutions were available once the problems were looked at in an innovative way.

Firstly, we decided that containers could be better loaded in order to attain the correct load distribution. Once formulated, we passed this on to our clients to implement.

Secondly, we decided that trailers could not be loaded to their 'drawing board' designed capacity. We identified the cut-off points before an average loaded container became marginal. At that point, we had to up-grade equipment.

Thirdly, we designed better - or modified trailers to provide solutions. To this end, we designed and built the Makzi for heavy 6 metre center mount containers that could be offloaded/loaded without the need to re-position. We then modified our existing tandem 6 metre skeletal fleet with sliding bogies in order to better distribute the weight. Interesting is that in so doing, we gained better tyre maintenance due to the longer wheel base.

We have also since then designed and built a 'Super Makzi' tri-axle fitted with a sliding bogie to take a legal load of 31 tons. If found to be overloaded on the drive axles of the truck tractor (the most common problem), the trailer bogie can be moved to transfer weight between axles groups to rectify.

We then looked at registering our fleet as abnormal vehicles in order to transport heavy containers under permit. As the cardinal rule of abnormal loads is that it must be indivisible, whether a container meets this criteria was a moot point at the time. We therefore discarded this option as we felt we would be circumventing the law as a convenience. In hindsight, our decision was correct for it is interesting to note that the authorities are now not granting abnormal permits for containers as they do not view them as being indivisible.

If a load can be transported legally without the need to overload an axle under permit, this is and always will be first prize. Our roads and economy demands it of us.

Obviously, these changes came at a price. We spent R600 000 last year and are looking at spending even more in the future. However, instead of asking the question that many transporters do: "How can we afford it?" we instead asked: "How can we NOT afford it?"

And it has paid off. The steady decline in fines issued to me coupled with the steady increase in clients willing to ask the correct questions and pay the higher price is our proactive investment in the future.

Our policy of designing equipment to suit the work has resulted in the following benefits:
* Our clients approach us and not vica versa.
* We have never lost a client due to poor service.
* We have 'fired' clients - some of them 'big boys'- as a result of them not wanting to run legal and have always replaced them with better clients!
* Clients get to know that we are professional and that we will not be dictated to on legality.
* Growth has been slower but our bad debts are extremely low. More importantly, because we deal with clients that are professional, payment is prompt. Less than 3% of our accounts are 60 days or more!

We regard the weighbridge as our friend and a very important part of our marketing drive. Our people and equipment are protected from abuse and our clients pay to run legally - or else reap the whirlwind. We have adopted a policy of 'Zero Tolerance' because it pays us to do so! As a matter of interest, we always work on practical average payloads and never take the 5% allowance into account as we regard this as extra 'insurance' to ensure we are legal.

We look forward to the day when transporters who should not be on the road are pulled off and impounded as, the stricter the authorities are, the more we can continue to expand. Nothing educates the market quicker! We recommend that all transporters get proactive now - as tomorrow will soon be yesterday.