Road Transport
Man invented the wheel only around 6000 years ago – curiously, later than the first paved roads, first evident around 4500 BC in the biblical city of Ur, in Mesopotamia. But, since then, man has been engaged in road transport for gain. Road transport has changed enormously over the last 50 years, benefiting from super highways, standardisation, multi-modal solutions, huge increases in fuel efficiency, engine power, driver comfort and safety, noise and emission reduction, etc. A modern truck bears no resemblance to the machines hauling supplies during the second world war.
Road transport is the optimum solution for point to point transport of smaller loads over the shorter haul. For larger payloads and longer distances, other means of transport are more cost-efficient. In Australia, with its vast distances and huge empty deserts, road trains were invented to quadruple road payloads and so remain competitive to rail and coastal shipping. Importantly, no time delays or time-consuming formalities for crossing borders are encountered in Australia.
In South Africa road transport is used as a substitute for unreliable railways, putting thousands of road trucks on the road to haul bulk export cargoes much better suited to rail. The result is an overworked and under-maintained road system that is visibly deteriorating year by year, with much heartache and financial hardship still to come if road infrastructure is to be re-habilitated to its former condition.
In the Netherlands the road infrastructure is superb, permitting the highest payloads per axle in all of Europe and serving as an efficient system to distribute imports through Rotterdam to the entire hinterland behind, from Germany as far as Russia, Turkey and even the southernmost former USSR members.
Some of the largest contracts handled by the companies of Sebenza World involve road transport and every year we spend millions on pre- and post carriage, multi modal transport, temperature controlled cargo, oversize and overweight loads, removals in bond and removals in transit; furniture vans, side-loader container trucks and everything in between.
Our product, our mission and our reason for being is, simply, delivery. Delivery of your consignments on time, in tact, within budget and as promised. For this, we need road transport, and lots of it. On every average working day in 2011, we had 40 trucks rolling for our clients: from half ton delivery vans to 400 ton multi-axle behemoths carrying heavy infrastructure items. Leave the arranging of your transportation to us: for delivery on time; in tact, within budget: Sebenza World – because our wheels turn for you.
