High cube container traffic is growing – is it here to stay?

South African ports handled over four million containers for the first time in 2009, with approximately 2.4 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) through Durban and a large increase to 1.3 million TEUs through Cape Town.

Approximately one million of the boxes were transshipped for onward consignment to other destinations and remained in the ports. The others were transported by road and rail to destinations all over southern Africa.

Of the four million TEUs, about 50% were 12-metre and 50% were six-metre boxes, with varying proportions landed and shipped at the different ports.

Of the 12-metre boxes, approximately 80% are now high cube containers (HCCs), with the proportion of high cubes growing each year as the older containers are replaced. This trend to high cube dimensions is now evident in the construction of new six-metre containers.

The advent of the HCC took place about 12 years ago and there was a slow but steady increase in the numbers until the recent world economic boom when the numbers of containers increased very dramatically worldwide due to the need to move manufactured goods from the Far East to the industrialised nations of the West.

South Africa caught this contagion and there are now about 20 000 to 25 000 high cube boxes per month being transported around southern Africa by road and rail (this is a very conservative estimate in view of the fact that all container movements include some road haulage).

The height of the HCC, at 2.9 metres, makes it illegal to transport on road (and on rail, in terms of the permissible rail gauge) but, in practice, the transport of these boxes has become so common that they excite no comment or curiosity on the road or rail systems.

In southern Africa, as in most other parts of the world, the design of truck tractors and trailer equipment for road freight has followed more or less similar design evolution driven by the main international suppliers. The fifth wheel coupling on typical truck tractors is about 1.25m from the ground, with the result that flatdeck trailers on 20- or 22-inch wheels are built with a deck height of about 1.55m.

As a result of this “standard design” arrangement, loading docks are generally constructed to match the 1.55m deck height and all freight-carrying vehicles are designed to those approximate height dimensions. Dock levellers are then used to absorb the changes due to spring deflection and permit easy access for forklifts.

There is, however, a legal problem in South Africa, due to the fact that a 2.9-metre box on a flatdeck trailer – with a 1.55-metre deck height – gives an overall height of 4.45m, and the National Road Traffic Act only permits a height of 4.3m.

The problem has been known for at least 10 years, and much debate has taken place about the issue. The problem is common to every country in the world, as the HCC is not a local phenomenon, and most countries have adjusted their road legislation to suit – in the same way as quay depths are changing for larger ships and runways for wide belly jet freighters.

Countries such as Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Australia and Ireland have simply raised the height limit to accommodate the inevitable growth of HCC movements.

South Africa has now had a 12-year ‘experimental’ period of transporting the HCC boxes to every corner of the country and region; and the owners of the containers, the shipping lines, which would be the first to react to any damage to their property, report that they have no records of damage due to rollovers or impacts with overhead structures that can be attributed specifically to the additional height of the HCC boxes, from several million movements.

In the face of the overwhelming evidence provided by the real experience of transporting the HCCs, it would seem that any further deliberations regarding stability and safety are irrelevant.

The dimensions of the problem were set out in a report for the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Department of Transport (funded by the Durban Harbour Carriers Association) in 2005, and submitted to the national Department of Transport with a request to change the legislation. This has been subjected to ongoing vacillation by the authorities.

A suggested alternative, that the entire industry should reduce trailer deck heights (and, by implication, every load dock in the country) to 1.25m, would have very widespread implications for inter-cargo flexibility, back-haul rates, and the current efficiency of an integrated system.

It must be recognised that load dock reconstruction costs are only part of the problem, as all current freight vehicles are built to same loading height. Any attempt at standardising on a lower height will affect all trailers, rigids, interlinks and non-container carrying vehicle combinations such as reefers, curtain-siders and box vans as well.

It is to be hoped that the current round of discussions will result in a speedy resolution of the issue, as there are serious potential insurance implications for carriers that can be shown to be operating ‘illegally’, and there is no current method by which prosecutions can be appealed.

It must further be recognised that failure to resolve the legality of transporting the HCCs to inland destinations on standard semitrailers is likely to promote the development of double handling of boxes from the docks on “container trailers” to warehouses and depots. This will lead to further increases in the proportions of containers de-stuffed in the port cities for reloading of sorted goods as break bulk onto interlinks for long-haul transport.

In the longer term, obstruction of container traffic on the South African road corridors is likely to promote industrial relocation to the coast and the development of alternative routes for the region, such as Maputo, Beira and Walvis Bay.

A further development in the world of container transport which has been pointed out by Kevin Martin, chairperson of the Durban Harbour Carriers Association, is the fact that reefer containers are becoming heavier, with the newer designs of 12-metre boxes coming off the dock weighing 34 tonnes, which is beyond the legal carrying capacity of most 6x4 trucktractor and 14-metre tridem semitrailer combinations.

If this trend continues (and export boxes may be becoming even heavier), this will have further implications for the ongoing debate about legal axle massload within the Southern African Development Community region.

It is significant that nine out of 10 of the heaviest overloads of the 188 000 loads weighed in KZN in 2008 were ISO containers, all apprehended at Mkondeni in Pietermaritzburg.

Nick Porée

SAFTI

Durban