Container terminals will work together to prevent overloaded trucks from hitting the road.
A recommended procedure for verifying the gross vehicle weight of vehicles or vehicle combinations entering a port terminal to pick up a container was signed on Wednesday, December 11, 2013, at the Voivodeship Office in Gdańsk. The signatories of the document include all maritime container terminals in Poland, from Szczecin to Gdańsk, as well as the Pomeranian Voivodeship Road Transport Inspectorate and the Polish Chamber of Forwarding and Logistics. The initiator of the procedure is DCT Gdańsk, which, with the support of PISIL and WITD, convinced other terminals to implement this solution.
The frequent practice of terminals allowing overloaded vehicles to leave posed a danger to the driver picking up the cargo and other road users, while also contributing to the destruction of roads in cities and beyond. Thirdly, it exposed both the terminal and the shipper to severe financial penalties imposed by the Road Transport Inspectorate. Previously, freight forwarders and carriers did not always select the appropriate vehicle for the weight of the cargo being picked up. With the signing of the procedure, these practices will have to change in all Polish ports.
– The new procedure is a milestone for Polish containerization – emphasized Jędrzej Mierzewski, Member of the Management Board for Operations, who signed the document on behalf of DCT. – Thanks to the agreement of all interested parties, we have a real chance to increase safety on our roads and help maintain the good quality of their surfaces.
– We have been testing the new regulations since mid-September – adds Marcin Kamola, one of the project coordinators from the DCT terminal side. – At the beginning, many drivers indeed arrived for cargo with an inappropriate vehicle, whose weight was so high that after picking up the load, the total exceeded the permissible 40 tons. Currently, after three months of testing, I can say that customers have become accustomed to the new rules and are happy to cooperate with us.
The permissible gross weight with a container is verified based on the tractor and trailer documents and the container weight declared by the forwarder. As practice shows, this action makes sense, as drivers often drive vehicles exceeding the permissible gross weight by even 50-60%.
– We recorded a case of an attempt to pick up two smaller containers in a situation where the vehicle with the containers weighed 70 tons – adds Justyna Przestrzelska, Gate Complex Manager at DCT, who coordinates the project from the practical side. – Such a flagrantly large overload on the road (the permissible weight is 40 tons, and only in justified cases 42 or 44 tons) is a threat not only to the driver himself, but above all to other road users, who have virtually no chance in a collision with such an overloaded vehicle.
Individual terminals will now gradually incorporate the procedure into their internal processes.