Weighbridges installed at Sydney’s Port Botany back in July have dramatically reduced the number of overweight container-laden trucks leaving stevedore terminals, according to NSW Roads and Ports Minister, Duncan Gay.
“Trucks leaving the Port Botany precinct carrying overweight imported containers are a danger to other drivers on the road network, not to mention causing significant ‘wear and tear’ on city streets and motorways,” he said. “I’m proud to say Port Botany is the only port in the country to have installed a network of weigh-in-motion weighbridges to detect, identify and monitor trucks exiting stevedore terminals carrying imported shipping containers.
“Since installing weighbridges in July this year, the percentage of truck axle overloads has dropped from 26 to 10 per cent – a 61.5 per cent reduction in the number of axle overloads in less than five months.”
The remaining 10 per cent of minor (zero to five per cent over mass) or substantially (five to twenty per cent over mass) overweight trucks are directed to adjacent container freight stations for load adjustment to ensure legal weights before being allowed to travel outside the port precinct.
Severely overweight trucks (above twenty per cent) cannot leave the port precinct. These containers have to be transported from stevedore terminals by rail or repacked to safe, legal weights before being allowed back onto a truck for transport.
A small percentage of rogue transport operators who deliberately avoid pulling into the seven accredited container freight stations are being ‘rounded up’ in a series of on-going enforcement and compliance campaigns by the Roads and Maritime Services in and around the Port Botany precinct targeting overweight trucks, vehicles with defects and poorly restrained loads within containers.
A proportion of containers arriving by cargo ship at Port Botany can be overweight, presenting a significant challenge for stevedores, transport carriers and road authorities alike. Minister Gay said the issue of overweight containers is a problem being faced by port authorities and operators around the globe.
Companies loading containers in China, Taiwan, Italy or North America are not particularly familiar with, or interested in Australian road rules. To complicate matters even further, international cargo shipping lines currently do not weigh individual containers.
“With an average of 2,000 container-laden trucks exiting Port Botany each day, it was crucial for trucks to be weighed as fast and efficiently as possible so as to not bring the second largest container port in Australia to a grinding halt. This was achieved by installing what’s called weigh-in-motion devices rather than static weighbridges. These devices allow trucks to drive over weighbridges without coming to a stop.
“We get to weigh every outbound truck without causing congestion at the port and still maintain the significant truck turnaround time savings delivered by the Port Botany Landside Improvement Strategy,” the Minister said.
Patrick and DP World stevedores installed four and three weigh-in-motion weighbridges at their terminal gates, respectively. Hutchison Ports Australia is also expected to install weigh-in- motion weighbridges when they start to move containers towards the end of 2013.
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