Astran / Middle East Drivers

We weren’t full TIR all the way, most of the ex Russian states didn’t fully accept it, and often went out of their way to throw a spanner in the works. We were helped out by the IRU and often sent faxes to them when we “encountered situations” at checkpoints. All the trucks had satellite fax phones…

Official border crossings were usually not to bad… 40 mins to 4 hours. but the internal Police Kontrol … they could get busy in your face, and were usually very selective about who they pulled…

The IRU suggested we keep logs about the internal Kontrol. how ever we never wrote anything down just kept mental notes then passed them on at the end of the trips…

We did get some back loads from Corgos but not many…there was a large Iron foundry near Omsk that made cast iron man hole units… so we used to load back from there quit a lot… Funny when we got stopped by internal control with a load of hand ball loaded man hole covers they really weren’t that interested in digging into the load for a better look…

Maersk now run some very large container ships I believe the ulage is around 16,000 20 foot containers. the price ex harbour fees China to Europort is $359.00 US per unit… Makes you wonder why they would run it over land…

Jeff…