One of our driver’s was taking a load of canned and glass jar foodstuffs to France the other week,one of our regular jobs of which we load several every day from Belgium.
He was stopped at the border just before Valenciennes by a Belgian control,who,when they couldn’t find anything wrong with tacho,s,paperwork,truck and trailer decided to inspect the load instead.
Aha!,insecure load!
Now,bearing in mind that all but two of our trailers are euroliners,and fitted with reinforced aluminium side-planks,as well as anti-slip mats and a cross bar at the back (which is perfectly good for this type of load,even in Germany) they decided that every pallet must be strapped!
The driver explained that strapping the actual pallets was a no-go,as the straps would just pull down between the cases and ruin the goods.
So,off the men in uniform trot for a natter.
They come back and say that the driver will have to put an empty pallet on top of every pallet on the trailer and then strap them!
So,our boss had to send another truck down to him with 32 empty euro pallets,and the two drivers then spent an hour doing what was required.
Oh! yes,he also had to send down just over 400 euro’s for the fine.
My boss was later heard to say that “I might as well pack it all in and shut the doors”
This is the problem, in a nutshell:
Unfortunately it’s no longer sufficient to rely on common sense - we are not trusted to. Instead, we have to memorise and apply a huge range of rules. Unfortunately, unless we have a truly infinite number of rules, they can’t possibly apply to every situation. This leads to the need to interpret rules, which is where we need to apply common sense. Dzzzzt! reductio ad absurdam. I’ve just blown a brain fuse.
In practice this gives rise to situations exactly like the one you describe, where different people interpret the rules in different ways. And it will always be the one in the blue uniform that has the last say.
As to where this is going, I think it has already gone We just have to accept that the current rule-based rather than common-sense based paradigm is going to give rise to these incidences of (expensive!) weird randomness just like the one you had.
There is no solution, all you can do is hope to minimise the effects:
Use a bit of common sense (but don’t let anyone catch you! )
Be nice to the guy in the uniform
Hope that it’s the other chap who end up with the load of too straight bananas, has load straps the wrong colour for the day of the week, or whatever
Z
Some of the above maybe tongue in cheek, or then… maybe not?
welshboyinspain:
so the police in belgium are helping their country through the crisis just like the french and spanish now then
It comes in fits and starts.
When the new load restraint regulations came in to force in Belgium over 18 months ago (which are actually the same rules as the Germans apply) then there were controls all over Belgium for a couple of months.
But,Belgium being Belgium,they soon got tired of doing the checks and now it happens very rarely.
Unlike Germany,where every morning of the week they have a load check on the A1 just north of Münster.
And every time I go past there,there is always at least one truck with the side open strapping the load.
welshboyinspain:
so the police in belgium are helping their country through the crisis just like the french and spanish now then
Very soon to be joined by the Portugese! That should be interesting, I have had a few dealings with them over the years and smart doesn’t seem to be one of the top considerations in Portugal.
With ref to the fine in Belgium,dont take offence,but did the driver kick off with an attitude,and start piping up,was it the customs or the police that stopped him/her?
I open the cab door,when in a control,smile,like you have no worries in the world,most of the time,i get told to carry on,it all depends how you react to them.
If the goods can be damaged by restraint,this seems unfair,has the goods would be damaged,then its a cmr insurance claim or loss of future contracts,in Germany they fine the freight forwarder as well as the driver,and take away the contract too.
I loaded in Pirmasens last week with machinery for Malaga, mainly conveyer belt pieces but also computer control equipment for a clothes handling system, the whole load was all palletised and total weight was about 5t.
after they loaded me (they just gave me coffee and made me sit and watch) i got my straps out of my side locker, the main bloke in the factory came over and said in perfect english “don’t even think of damaging this stuff”
I explained what the german police were like about straps and he went to the office came back 10 mins later with a letter in german, he said give this to the police if they ask you about straps, it was some sort of indemnity explaining that the company had loaded the vehicle and did not want any straps over the equipment and would take responsibility for it.
after ringing the boss he said ok but as Pirmasens is only about 30mins from France i got out without any grief and didn’t get to find out if the letter was genuine or not
“Easy” solution - the police either take a training on load securing or they don’t check it at all. Everybody should be doing what he/she knows about.
The BAGs can be pain, but they know something about their job and, above all, have their books, with stuff in them based on some research (though sometimes difficult to apply in real world).
Bigger pain are companies where they declare straps on the lorry schrott and offer you to buy some from them or they are not loading.
Re WBIS: I’ve heard some stories of drivers using magic sentence “if load can be damaged by securing it then it is not packaged properly… or you give me it in writing that you don’t want it to be secured”, after that loaders became helpful, got empty pallets, bits of wood etc and helped strapping the stuff down.
HomoFaber:
Re WBIS: I’ve heard some stories of drivers using magic sentence “if load can be damaged by securing it then it is not packaged properly… or you give me it in writing that you don’t want it to be secured”, after that loaders became helpful, got empty pallets, bits of wood etc and helped strapping the stuff down.
my german is very basic, enough to eat, drink and get loaded but as the letter was in german i had to believe him. the lengths of conveyor were very light and were bolted to the pallets at their bases so i could have put straps over the pallets on the floor but that would have been pointless and looked stupid
if they put them in crates they could have got more in the trailer by double stacking but seeing as we’re doing these loads until november i wasn’t going to volunteer that idea to cut down on the number of loads
welshboyinspain:
I loaded in Pirmasens last week with machinery for Malaga, mainly conveyer belt pieces but also computer control equipment for a clothes handling system, the whole load was all palletised and total weight was about 5t.
after they loaded me (they just gave me coffee and made me sit and watch) i got my straps out of my side locker, the main bloke in the factory came over and said in perfect english “don’t even think of damaging this stuff”
I explained what the german police were like about straps and he went to the office came back 10 mins later with a letter in german, he said give this to the police if they ask you about straps, it was some sort of indemnity explaining that the company had loaded the vehicle and did not want any straps over the equipment and would take responsibility for it.
after ringing the boss he said ok but as Pirmasens is only about 30mins from France i got out without any grief and didn’t get to find out if the letter was genuine or not
james, i think that if they give you a letter or not, as soon as that load is put on the trailor it,s you,r responsobility.
The one thing in Germany is that the consignors are equally responsible for the load and correct documentation, where in the UK the companies just wash their hands of you as soon as you leave the gatehouse.
This has been so a long time, when you load from Bayer, BASF or Hoechst, the truck was given an inhouse MOT & ADR control and could still fail their stringent checks even if it was legal for the roads. They also take some responsibility for overloading.
Our firm does a lot of building materials and all of our drivers are very well versed in load securing and all our trucks have TÃœV load certificates.
In spite of this we still get coppers and BAG trying it on.
Our gaffer has instructed us to act in the following manner when pulled for an allegedly insecure load:
Be polite at all times.
Obey the instructions and requirements of the officers on site until they deem the load safe enough to proceed.
Take a load of photos of the load before and after.
Refuse to pay any on the spot fine and require that the case goes to court where our gaffer will turn up with the local TÃœV representative and tear these so called road side “experts” to shreds, so that they get the message
Inselaffe:
Refuse to pay any on the spot fine and require that the case goes to court where our gaffer will turn up with the local TÃœV representative and tear these so called road side “experts” to shreds, so that they get the message
Inselaffe:
Refuse to pay any on the spot fine and require that the case goes to court where our gaffer will turn up with the local TÃœV representative and tear these so called road side “experts” to shreds, so that they get the message
But is this option open to non Germans?? Many many years ago, I got pulled out of a line of traffic going through roadworks and was given a 300 Dm fine for speeding through the roadworks!!! When I pointed out that I would have been driving over the top of everyone else if I had been speeding it had no effect and I was arrested and taken to the nearest motorway police station. I was then put in a cell as I flatly refused to pay the fine and, for the one and only time in my life, lost my temper with them throwing the keys at them. This was after, despite my tacho showing 72 kph in a 70 limit, they insisted I was doing 92 kph!!
Four hours later, they obviously got fed up of me. I had used my age old trick on going to sleep but on my back. This had the effect that no one in the station got any peace as I can snore for the World when on my back . I was thrown out the station and never heard another word about it.
it’s about time drivers learned to do the job they are paid to do.
and part of that job is securing loads.
if they won’t do it, or can’t do it, then they should go and do something else.
ask your colleague if he would have taken the same load, without securing it on a flatbed?
limeyphil:
ask your colleague if he would have taken the same load, without securing it on a flatbed?
he probably wouldn’t for the same reason a tanker driver wouldn’t take his load in a curtain sider!
as the load wasn’t on a flat bed the point is irrelevant
There are plenty of loads that can travel perfectly safely in a curtain sider without any other form of restraint but are not suitable for flatbeds.
We used to load boxes of shoes (around 20,000 at a time) I would never consider taking them on a flatbed, but happily traveled 1,000s of miles across Europe with them unrestrained in my curtain sider, would you have strapped them down?
We just have to accept that the current rule-based rather than common-sense based paradigm is going to give rise to these incidences of (expensive!) weird randomness just like the one you had.
)
explaining that the company had loaded the vehicle and did not want any straps over the equipment and would take responsibility for it.
but as the letter was in german i had to believe him. the lengths of conveyor were very light and were bolted to the pallets at their bases so i could have put straps over the pallets on the floor but that would have been pointless and looked stupid 
