Bulk Connections has introduced a truck booking system and a staging area at Durban’s Old Airport south of Durban. This, as a measure to ease congestion on the Bayhead Road which has been caused by trucks to and from the bulk storage facility.
In a communique sent out to its clients, Bulk Connections wrote;
As you are all aware and per our previous communications regarding the congestion on Bayhead road and surrounding residential areas. We had to implement a ‘Booking In’ system and a staging area where road trucks are ‘called in’ on a controlled and coordinated manner.
As a start, we have been offered a staging facility – the FPT terminal which has facilities to hold approximately 100 road trucks at any one time at the old Durban airport. We will regulate the number of trucks at approximately 20 – 25 trucks per hour from this site to control the number of BC trucks on Bayhead road. We are in negotiations with other sites in the Cato Ridge area and will give feedback once we have secured a suitable site in this area.
As from 05H00 Monday morning 31st August 2020 – all trucks passing through Cato Ridge must proceed to the ‘old Durban airport’ FPT terminal. Once there they will be booked in on a ‘booking in’ system and thereafter authorised to depart to Bulk Connections. On departure they will receive an ‘order number’, an authorised stamped ticket and windscreen display board, with a sequence number that permits them to enter Bayhead, the Cutler complex and finally to Bulk Connections.
PLEASE NOTE AND ADVISE ALL YOUR TRANSPORTERS – ANY TRUCK THAT DOES NOT HAVE THIS AUTHORISED STAMPED TICKET WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO
ENTER THE CUTLER COMPLEX OR BULK CONNECTIONS AND WILL HAVE TO TRAVEL BACK TO THE FPT TERMINAL AT THE OLD AIRPORT TO BE APPROVED.
Road trucks will NOT be despatched on a first come first serve basis, only as per the number of trucks that can be comfortably offloaded per stockpile area on an hourly basis.
Read also: Transnet mandatory truck appointment system sees drastic reduction in Bayhead Road traffic jams
Therefore, it is imperative that all customers and transporters maintain a regulated, systematic delivery procedure from their loading stations so as not to overload the system.
Bulk Connections will send out a notification on the number of trucks each customer can send to BC daily, which must be regulated, per hour, over a 24-hour day. The number of ‘daily deliveries will be determined by the planned storage space or shipments negotiated
and authorised by the BC management team.
It will be important that planning of cargo for vessels is done timeously that does not result in exceeding the permitted number of
deliveries per day. For example – if a customer’s storage/offloading capacity is 3 trucks per hour – only 3 trucks per hour will be allowed into BC or despatched from the staging area on an hourly basis, any truck over the established allocation will have to stand until the following day unless authorised by BC.
Therefore, proper planning will be critical to meet negotiated storage commitments/shipments, as planned and authorised.
Deliveries of big volume parcels that are not properly or timeously planned for a customer’s allocated storage space, or for an accepted nominated vessel or for a vessel arriving in relatively short notice will not be given additional daily deliveries unless authorised by the BC planning team, if it exceeds our allotted daily booking system volume and if it will prejudice other exporters planned deliveries.
Your assistance with suitable cargo deliveries will improve your volume throughput and alleviate congestion on Bayhead road and surrounding port facilities.
