Christopher de Saxe

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

Dear HVTT Forum subscriber I trust that you have had a good start to 2022 and that it will be a rewarding and productive year for you despite the ongoing uncertainties regarding the Covid pandemic. This newsletter contains a few topics related to road freight transport in Southern Africa and of course a weather report. The Performance-Based Standards/HCV pilot project in Namibia reached a significant milestone in November – the official launch of the first PBS project in the country. Although the vehicles had started operating in July, the launch was postponed due to Covid. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the launch in Walvis Bay. The vehicle combination is a 27.4m 11-axle A-double with a maximum combination mass of 91.5 tonnes and a maximum payload of 66.2 tonnes – see attached photos. There are 4 vehicles that transport salt a relatively short distance of 11km from... Read More

Dear HVTT subscriber, On December 20, 2021, the Coquihalla Highway in southwest British Columbia re-opened to essential commercial traffic after major storms and flooding caused extensive damage and forced its closure on November 14, 2021. Those storms also severely impacted other land-based transportation routes (road and rail) to/from the city of Vancouver, effectively cutting it off from the rest of Canada. This recent event highlights the importance of building resilient road freight transport systems, which is the theme of this month’s HVTT newsletter. What does resilience mean? In general terms, resilience refers to the ability to recover quickly from difficulties. In material science, we often consider resilience as the ability of a material to absorb energy, deform elastically, and then return to the original form upon unloading. This idea of “bouncing back” is useful when considering the functionality of a road freight transport system. Consider a system operating at full... Read More

Greetings to all HVTT Newsletter subscribers from Europe, After beautiful autumn, which almost felt like pre-covid period the winter season is slowly approaching us, and we feel the changes happening literally with every new week. Having less sun, more precipitations (somewhere with snow), and dropping temperatures appears to be favourable weather for the pandemic as the numbers are continuously rising in Europe on the global level. Sadly, it appears we are standing in front on ‘new’ Covid season with restrictions and lockdowns to come despite fairly high vaccination rate. In this newsletter I would like to share with you recent developments on: Enabling EMS vehicles  for cross-border transport between Netherlands and Germany Deployment of Longer Semitrailers in United Kingdom The continuation of Pilot on Super Eco Combi (A-Double) in the Netherlands Cross-border transport with EMS vehicles between Netherlands and Germany On September bilateral agreement was signed between Dutch and German... Read More

Dear HVTT Forum subscribers, It’s been a while since China hosted HVTT16. The symposium was beyond expectations, especially given the challenges RIOH faced due to COVID-19. A big compliment to them is in order here! More than 1000 people participated in the online HVTT16. That is a record in the history of the HVTT Forum. We hereby welcome all new members of the HVTT Forum community from China and other parts of the world. All papers presented at HVTT16 can be found on the HVTT Forum website via the library (Library à Conference papers) and photos can be found in the photo gallery (HVTT Conferences à Photo gallery). You can jump straight to these via the following links: https://hvttforum.org/conference-papers/2021-hvtt16/ https://hvttforum.org/hvtt16-qingdao-2021/ Regional Hub concept An experiment during the HVTT16 symposium was the concept of ‘Regional Hubs’. Because travel to China was not possible, but meetings could take place at a national... Read More

Dear friends of the HVTT Forum, We are now only five weeks away from the HVTT16 symposium in China and most of the pieces are falling into place. We have a very exciting symposium to look forward to. There will be around sixty papers with very relevant and interesting content presented during the three days. In addition, there will be several side events in which world-leading developments in the Chinese transport industry will be presented and discussed. The Covid-19 pandemic still presents a challenge for international travel to China, and so we have planned a unique form of hybrid symposium. The main meeting is, of course, in Qingdao, but we have organised so-called HVTT16 ‘Regional Hubs’ in Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, UK, France, Canada and hopefully also in New Zealand and South Africa. These will allow people attending the conference remotely to join up with fellow conference attendees in-person in... Read More

Greetings from the Southern Hemisphere, Winter is now approaching here.  In Auckland, the temperatures are still quite mild with daytime highs of around 16°C but it is getting cooler overnight – 8°C or so.  Today it is also expected to rain. Preparations for HVTT16 in Qingdao are progressing well.  We have received over 80 extended abstracts and authors are now finalising their full papers.  Quite a few full papers have already been submitted. As you will be aware, the Covid-19 situation has resulted in HVTT16 being the first ever of our symposia to be offered in a hybrid form with both in-person and on-line attendance options.  This form of conference may well be the way of the future.  Although there are obvious benefits from in-person attendance that cannot be fully realised through on-line participation, on-line participation offers a significantly lower cost alternative which makes the symposium accessible to a much... Read More

Dear HVTT Forum subscribers, I am proud to draw your attention to the renewed website of the 16th International Symposium on Heavy Vehicle Transport & Technology (www.hvtt16.com.cn/en/), held from September 7-9 in Qingdao, China. The HVTT16 is increasingly taking shape. It is a major challenge to create an attractive online symposium in parallel with a physical program in Qingdao. The HVTT16 organization strives to ensure that everyone in every time zone can attend as much of the program as possible at acceptable times, that we can communicate with each other and that everything runs smoothly technically. They have brought in extra expertise to meet these challenges and they do that well, I can tell you that. A big compliment to the organizers! The number of papers is also encouraging. The HVTT16 program will accommodate approximately 70 papers on a variety of topics related to heavy duty vehicles and (road) freight... Read More