Christopher de Saxe

Dear members of the HVTT community, It feels almost unreal. All traces of the previously so rigorous Chinese Covid regime are completely gone. Society is back to normal. It will take years until we know which policies around the world were more efficient in combating the pandemic outbreak. One serious effect of the Chinese strict control was that very few foreigners visited China in the past 3,5 years. The media reporting in the West focused on negative issues, which left many with the impression that China was standing still or even stagnating. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Although the economy took a severe beating last year, in the progress has continued unabated. Innovation, new regulations, modification of regulations, distorting business models and so on have all developed uninterrupted. It is sometimes said that the speed of one year in China corresponds to three years in the West. If... Read More

Dear HVTT Forum Newsletter subscribers, We are pleased to bring you news about the upcoming HVTT17/ICWIM9 Joint Symposium in Brisbane! It promises to be a beautiful and rich program with more than 100 submitted papers. For people from outside Australia who want to participate in the symposium, now is the time to make preparations for travel and accommodation. The symposium starts on Monday 6 November and lasts until Friday 10 November. Detailed information can be found on our website www.hvttforum.org/hvtt17-icwim9/, for example suggested hotels, about ticket prices or if you need an official invitation. The organizing committee in Australia is also hard at work creating its own website. Tickets can be purchased via this symposium website. As soon as it is ready, we will inform you about it via our website. The deadline for submitting the full papers is March 31. For those who need more time, the deadline has... Read More

With freezing cold in North America and scorching heat in South America, why not travel to Central America! Central America acts as a major connector for cargo ships travelling from Asia on their way to Europe and to the Eastern USA. The Panama Canal provides a direct thruway particularly to container vessels, with the largest NeoPanamax vessel to cross in 2022 of 16,285 TEU (TEU is the unit of a 20-foot container). With the continuous increase in international trade, the idea of a dry canal (in Spanish “canal seco”) as an alternative to the Panama Canal has been developing from concept to potential reality in Central American countries since the late 90s. A canal seco usually involves the setting of a high-capacity rail connection between two ports, or a highway corridor. It is politically and economically attractive, because in comparison, it is faster to build than to construct a transoceanic... Read More

Dear HVTT Forum members, I’m pleased to be writing the (belated) November 2022 edition of the HVTT Forum newsletter. A few things have diverted my efforts from getting the newsletter out during November, none more so than the work which is now well underway for our joint HVTT17/ICWIM9 conference. I’ll have more to say about that later in this newsletter. I’m going to go straight to the subject of weather. While it is customary to end HVTT Forum newsletters on this topic, weather events during 2022 have directly impacted on all things transport across Australia. The resilience of Australia’s road transport industry has again been on display during 2022, with severe weather and flooding have impacted the operation of road and rail transport, and supply chains more generally. Flooding in regional areas across the Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria forced heavy vehicle operations to take long detours... Read More

Dear HVTT Forum subscriber, In South Africa, horrific truck crashes have reached the media headlines on an all too frequent basis during the past few months. In September, a crash in KwaZulu-Natal involving a truck and an LDV resulted in 21 fatalities including 19 children. One of the contributing factors, I believe, is the massive increase in the price of coal since February as a result of the war in the Ukraine, together with the inability of Transnet, the South African government-owned rail, port and pipeline company, to cope with the increase in the demand for the export of coal. This has led to a significant increase in truck volumes (in some cases as much as 40% or between 400 and 500 trucks per day, both directions on a given route) on the major highways and provincial roads to the ports of Maputo (in Mozambique), Richards Bay and Durban. It... Read More

Dear HVTT subscriber, In November 2023, the HVTT Forum will join forces with the International Society for Weigh-in-Motion (ISWIM) to produce a joint international scientific conference under the theme: Technology Convergence 2023 – Setting the wheels in motion – Reimagining the future of heavy vehicles, roads and freight. As a member of both sponsoring organizations, I am particularly pleased to see this initiative come to fruition. To help promote the event and considering the upcoming deadline for abstract submissions (October 31, 2022), I decided to share some reflections on this theme in this month’s newsletter. Reimagining truck size and weight policy with systems thinking I spent much of the early part of my research career thinking about truck size and weight policy. In that time, I became fascinated with some rather thorny policy questions: Can we design more productive trucks that impose less wear on pavements and bridges than existing trucks? What happens when a truck... Read More

Dear HVTT Forum subscriber, I hope this newsletter from Europe finds you in a good shape no matter you are currently enjoying peak of the summer or winter period. For this newsletter I selected two topics being the various approaches to deploy A-double combinations in Europe and continuous rise of electrification in the road freight transport. As you may remember from some of the previous newsletters, I was updating you over the progressing developments to pilot of A-double combination (tractor with two semitrailers coupled by a dolly) on dedicated corridor between cities of Rotterdam and Venlo, being lead logistic hubs,  in the Netherlands. Sadly, in May the Dutch Ministry of the of Infrastructure and Water management has decided to put the pilot on hold without further support or investments. It is mainly due to prevailing opinion at the Ministry that implementation of A-Double represents considerable safety risks for the road... Read More

Dear members of the HVTT community, My apologies for being this late with this June monthly letter, but on the other hand by being delayed I get the chance to include a very good piece of news: China is relaxing its Covid-related entry rules to 7+3 days of quarantine. This is an important step toward being able to live with the Corona virus and sends an important signal that China wants to be an integral part of the global society. Transport is at the core of a functioning economy – both domestic and international – and another piece of good news is that the Chinese harbours are now operating at near to normal levels. One reason for high inflation pressure around the world has been supply chain disturbances caused by transport bottlenecks. Continuing on the theme of good news it seems that the gradual easing of pandemic controls in China... Read More

Hello everyone from a cold and foggy Buenos Aires – really challenging from a circulation point of view! Not for the faint hearted. I suggest you fetch a glass of Malbec. In Argentina we are currently experiencing a fuel crisis. The crisis is not only about the increase in the cost of fuel but its availability. The Transport Operators Association has even created a map where you can see the provinces (in a traffic light style) which are in trouble (red or dark orange). (See figure below.) The lack of fuel, more intensely felt on national routes at a time of grain exports, brings losses, inefficiencies and accidents. From the 700 drivers consulted by the Association, almost 60% said they had to queue for over 6 hours sometimes to get between 20 to 50 litres of diesel. Which means that for most trips, they have to queue 6 or 7... Read More

Dear HVTT Forum subscriber, HVTT17/ICWIM9, Brisbane May 2023: Call for abstracts coming soon! I’m delighted to write my first newsletter to you as Vice President, Australasia and Pacific, of the HVTT Forum. I wish to acknowledge those who’ve held this position over the years – and, most recently, Rob DiCristoforo and John de Pont. It’s quite humbling to follow in the footsteps of others who’ve contributed so much to the HVTT Forum through this role, and I thank you for all your support so far. Having stepped into this role at the same time as the announcement of Brisbane (Australia) as the host city for our next symposium (HVTT17), it’s fair to say that I’ve hit the road running in leading planning arrangements for this event! Planning for HVTT17 One of the early planning decisions was to host the HVTT17 event jointly with the 9th International Conference for Weigh In... Read More