If you are a customer of us at Handico Trucking you will know we charge extra costs for visiting certain terminals. In the last year we have needed to extend this to ever more terminals. In this blog we will explain why we do this.
Left bank charge in Antwerp
To pass from the right bank side of the port we need to pass through the Liefkenshoektunnel, which is a toll road that costs €20. The roads in this part of Antwerp are also heavily congested and therefore lead to extra delays and waiting times. This is also a cost we try to cover with the left bank surcharge.
Quay 1700
DP World in Antwerp has long been congested. For this terminal we need to book one hour time-slots. Most of the time all slots are fully booked. Sometimes we can avoid this by buying a so called 'premium slot'. For an additional fee we can enter during a time-slot which is already full. Unfortunately this is not always an option and we have to wait until a slot becomes free. That means the driver has waiting times at the terminal before drop-off, which we cannot outright charge to customers. It also puts extra workload and stress on our planning team as they are constantly trying to get a slot.
Quays 869 and 913
Both quays have used time slots for a long, but they never enforced them. This lead to congestion within the terminals and long waiting times. Since a few months they have started to enforce the slots in two hour windows. This has reduced waiting times within the terminals, however all slots are now always fully booked. On some days already two days in advance. So now drivers simply have to wait outside on the street for a time slot to become available. Thus, the congestion has simply oved to the streets outside the terminals. Because the booked time slots are often not at the hour a driver arrives we also have additional waiting hours there, which we cannot charge to our customer. And same as at Quay 1700 our planning team is constantly busy trying to get slots.
In some cases we are forced to drop-off a container at a depot in the evening, just to make sure we are on time for our next job. This also involves costs which we cannot carge outright to the client.
As these terminals have increased our workload, waiting times and costs for premium slots we unfortunately were forced to add charges for visiting them. We of course try to keep these as low as possible.
RWG
Like many other terminals RWG struggles to deal with the amount of trucks during the afternoon. Their idea to compat this is to charge for truck visits between 6 am and 6 pm. Despite many protests and discussions between the terminal and trucker organizations, RWG has decided to implent this decision. They are of the idea that this will force truckers to come during the night. As you will know this is not possible as almost all of your and our customers are only open during the day. If our trucks pick-up at night we cannot load or unload during the day.
Therefore we are forced to pay for the day slots and unfortunately have to charge this onwards to you, our customer. We think the best solution to avoid the cost is to book as much as possible for vessels who visit other terminals.
