Following the recent hike in the cost of transporting containers from the Lagos ports to other parts of the country, the truck owners have given reasons for the development.
It will be recalled that the truckers hiked the cost of transporting cargoes from the Apapa and Tincan Island ports to Lagos and other parts of the country following the suspension of withdrawal of service by the truck drivers which lasted for about ten days leaving many containers trapped inside the ports with little or trucks to evacuate them.
The Lagos State Vice Chairman, Dry Cargo Section of the National Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO), Alhaji Abdullahi Inuwa Mohammed while speaking to newsmen in Lagos said that the hike was being driven by the law of demand and supply as there were many containers to be evacuated from the ports while trucks that were available to carry them were few.
Mohammed observed that contrary to insinuations that the truck owners and drivers hiked the cost in order to take more money from the importers and their agents, there was never a time the drivers and truck owners sat down to decide a price hike rather the hike was being pushed by agents themselves who wanted their cargoes to be taken out of the ports in order to escape demurrage payment.
According to him,” People may think that we hike the price but it is not that we hiked the price per say, what is there is the law of demand and supply. The empty trucks are not much on ground and people, because of the recent withdrawal of service by the drivers; some of the containers that are trapped necessitated so many demands for trucks whereas empty trucks are not readily available because most of the trucks are laddened with empty containers. So, it is the law of demand and supply.
“Now, about five people are looking for trucks and suddenly one truck comes, it is not even the truck driver that determines the price, it is those agents who are competing to see that they evacuate their consignment. One will volunteer to pay N100, 000, the other will price N120, 000, will I leave that of N120, 000 and go for that of N100, 000? If the third person comes and chooses to pay N150, 000, will I leave him and go for the one who priced N120, 000 when I know that my truck will not come back until the next one month or so.
“Truck owners and drivers did not come together to say let us hike the price. It is simply being controlled by the law of demand and supply. Out of the trucks you see lying on the roads; eighty percent of them are carrying empty containers. When you count one to fifty trucks, hardly will you see empty flatbed truck except the ones that are trapped on the gridlock but majority of the trucks you see on the road are carrying empty containers or export containers.
“People are eager to see that they take out their consignments out of the ports in order to avoid payment of accruing demurrage but trucks are not available. Again, if a truck loads and goes out, to come back becomes a problem because it will take days for it to return. The hike notwithstanding, it is the truck owner that is losing compared to before when your truck can successfully go on the average four to five trip a week but now, in a month, if you are so lucky, you may be able to go two trips or one. Even in the face of the hike, I cannot say that I have recovered my money because before you come to the ports to load, you know the obstacles on the roads”.
On whether the price would come down soon, the NARTO Vice Chairman said,” I believe it will come down, if all these holding bays are now functioning and the traffic reduced, definitely, the cost will come down. In the last few years that the shipping companies refused to utilize their holding bays for receiving empty containers, that is what contributed to all these. Out of one hundred percent of the problem, access road contributes twenty percent”.
Also speaking, the Chairman Tincan Island Chapel of the Road Transport Employers’ Association of Nigeria (RTEAN), Alhaji Isiaka Olalere blamed the hike on bad port access roads and lack of holding bays by the shipping companies to receive their empty containers which according to him forced all trucks to litter the roads and bridges with empty containers.
“Even with that amount, the truck owners are still losing because the number of days we are using on one trip when the port was getting it right is not the same number of days we use for the same destination now. After discharging at your destination, it will take you another ten days for you to bring the empty container back to the port. All the shouts about holding bays, there is no much provision for holding bays, those who are in charge of holding bays are not serious because if we are allowed to offload all the empty containers outside the port, we will not be having all this problems.
“But in a situation whereby about seven thousand containers are coming out of the ports and the holding bays cannot receive more than one thousand containers or two thousand, the remaining five thousand will be on the road and vehicles are going in on daily basis. Before you see one empty flatbed going into the port to load, you will see twenty loaded trucks leaving the ports.
” Issue of accessing the port is the main problem and there is nothing anybody can do except if federal government can acquire land or create a space where all the empty containers can be dropped, like this lighter terminal here, let everybody be dropping their empty containers there and they will in turn use lighter ferries to take them down to where their vessels are. Let the shipping companies be taking it there whenever they need it, without that, we are going to rely on holding bays. Some of the shipping companies don’t have holding bay like Cosco, those who don’t have holding bays, they should be made to use that place. There is another empty land at the trade fair, that one can take about 15,000 containers or so”, he submitted.
On the allegations that truckers hiked the cost in order to get more money from agents who collects so much money from the importers for transport but end up shortchanging the drivers by paying them less, Alhaji Olalere said,” That is not true. Though they collect higher amount and pay us less in the past, it is demand and supply that is responsible for the current hike. There was a time they used to collect N100, 000 from the importer and pay the driver N40, 000. It is only when there is a problem that you now know how much the agent collected but it is not the cause of what is happening now. If we are able to access the ports freely and come out freely, everything will come back to normal”.
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