Truckers in Hebei being stopped, fined, for overloading
Source: Mysteel
Jun 13, 2018 11:30
Highway police in North China’s Hebei province have begun conducting spot checks on all trucks plying the province’s roads and are issuing fines to drivers of trucks they deem to be loaded beyond the legal limit, Mysteel has learned. As Hebei is China’s largest iron- and steelmaking base, inevitably most of the trucks being fined are carrying steelmaking raw materials, with the result that truckers in one city are asking their steel mill customers to pay Yuan 10/tonne ($1.5/t) or Yuan 20/t more from ports to steel works because by sticking to the legal limit, their margins per load have shrunk.
The checks began in the province’s major cities including Tangshan and Handan from late May though at whose behest remains unclear as no formal announcement was made or warning issued by the Hebei provincial government, Mysteel was told.
The start of the checks in Tangshan coincided with the local government’s order to restrict 50% capacity for sintering and pelletizing shaft furnaces over May 26-June 7, an official from a Tangshan-based steel mill said. “But as of today (June 12) the checks on overloaded vehicles continue.” Moreover, though city authorities in Handan and Shijiazhuang – cities which host many steelmakers – have not issued similar restrictions on sintering and pellet-making like Tangshan, the police there are nevertheless stopping trucks they suspect of being overloaded. Most are transporting steelmaking raw materials including iron ore, coke and metallurgical coal but the size of the fines usually imposed is not known.
Overloading is a perennial problem in China and in Hebei, where some trucking companies double or even triple the volumes of raw materials volumes carried on trucks to reduce costs, Mysteel notes. Since late May, truckers serving Handan have been asking steelmakers to pay an extra Yuan 10-20/t for deliveries, sources in the city said, but how many mills have complied remains unknown.
Back in July 2016 the Ministry of Transport tried to address the overloading problem by introducing new restrictions on loads according to truck size. For example, the maximum load permissible for a three-axle truck was 27 tonnes, that for a four-axle truck 36 t and for a six-axle truck the new limit was 49 t, down from 55t previously, Mysteel notes. Under China’s Road Traffic Safety Law, fines for a truck a few tonnes over limit start at Yuan 200 but surge to Yuan 2,000 for those considered seriously in excess, such as 30% over limit or more.
“The instantaneous decision among city authorities in Hebei to crack down on overloaded trucks may be related to the province’s ongoing inspections of environmental protection facilities at manufacturers and building sites launched by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment over May 31-June 30,” an official from a Shijiazhuang-based steel mill said, noting the checks are likely to continue all this month. Besides the dust and pollution such heavily laden trucks generate, the overloading itself can cause serious safety problems, he added. Industry sources in other parts of China including East China’s Jiangsu say that as yet, no such vehicle inspections are being carried out in their regions.
The impact of the strict checks on truck loads seems to be reflected in data from several Mysteel surveys, including iron ore discharge and domestic iron ore stocks at mines.
Over May 24-June 7, the total iron ore discharge volume in North China’s Caofeidian, Jingtang and Tianjin ports dropped by 6% or 58,000 tonnes/day to 848,000 tonnes/day. At the same time, stocks of iron ore concentrates at 25 surveyed mines in Hebei increased by 10% or 20,000 tonnes to 220,000 tonnes, according to Mysteel’s survey published on June 8.
The checks on truck loads in Hebei are also being seen as serving Beijing’s strategy of improving air quality in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and to encourage more steelmakers to adopt rail for delivering raw materials and finished goods, in accordance with Beijing’s plan to shift road traffic to rail in North China’s Bohai-Rim economic zone, a Shanghai-based analyst said.
Currently over 80% of iron ore is transported through trucks in China but now, Caofeidian port is trying to increase railway capacity. An environment ministry report said Caofeidian is targeting 15 million tonnes/year of iron ore railway capacity this year and 40 million tonnes/year by 2019.
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