Newsletter

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

News from Road Transportation in South America Hello everyone, one year on and we are still dealing worldwide with the COVID19 pandemic. In my previous newsletter I described what was going on with the truck drivers in the region, the discrimination they suffer although considered essential workers. “Focus on Transport”, a road transport magazine from South Africa, thought the contents of that newsletter were relevant for its readers and asked us to published it, it came out in the December issue, just as the new variant in S.A. was known. COVID 19 in South America, many lessons learnt. After reading HVTT’s February newsletter, I can understand why. So, I am delighted to inform that, in line with World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, this March the Brazilian Ministry of Health included transportation professionals from all over Brazil as a priority group to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. So, what else is going... Read More

Dear HVTT Forum subscriber 2020 certainly was a crazy year, beyond most people’s wildest forecasts. And the prospects for 2021 remain very much uncertain. One of the more serious impacts of the COVID-19 virus on logistics’ costs (and truck drivers) in southern Africa was the transit times at border posts. Several the key border posts in the Region, such as those between South Africa and Zimbabwe (Beitbridge) and South Africa and Mozambique (Lebombo/Ressano Garcia), which are situated on two of the main freight corridors, are renowned for long delays for trucks. The COVID-19 screening protocols exacerbated the situation, and vehicle queues in some cases exceeded 15 km at the Beitbridge border post and 25 km on both sides of the Lebombo/Ressano Garcia border post. During one week in Dec 2020, 15 people died at Beitbridge due to a combination of the long delays and the high summer temperatures between 40... Read More

Dear HVTT subscriber, In this issue of the newsletter, I offer some perspectives on road freight transport during the COVID-19 pandemic and point to two truck-related data sources of particular interest in the North American context. Perspectives on Road Freight Transport during COVID-19 I receive regular emails from the local Manitoba Trucking Association, the voice of the trucking industry in the province of Manitoba, Canada. Throughout 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic emerged and ultimately affected all aspects of societies around the world, those emails informed Association members of the ever-changing restrictions and requirements affecting the industry. They reflected the complexities and challenges facing the industry, the ever-evolving and multi-dimensional nature of the road freight transport task, and the critical role the industry plays in meeting essential consumer demands. The complexity of cross-border freight transport While personal cross-border travel between Canada and the United States has been restricted since March 2020,... Read More

Dear HVTT Forum subscribers, It is about nine months since I wrote my last newsletter. Nine months, since we all globally experience the new way of life and the working due to COVID-19 pandemic. Sadly, the situation here in Europe does not improved significantly over the time, perhaps the opposite. The time we bought very expensively during the first lockdown on the spring was somehow carelessly spend over the relaxed summer, and now at the beginning of winter many of the European countries find themselves in second hard lockdown. The only robust solution on the long-term horizon appears to be the mass vaccination which will start in coming weeks in many European states. So, I wish that in my next newsletter COVID-19 will not be a topic anymore and we can share again only the developments on the weather and Heavy Vehicle Transport Technology. Speaking of weather, I must say... Read More