Current situation container hinterland transports

Current situation container hinterland transports

Ladies and Gentlemen, dear business partners,

Due to the occasion, we have to inform you at regular intervals about the critical situation in seaport hinterland traffic and about the challenges in the transport world.

All three modes of transport, inland waterway, rail and truck, are affected by the globally disrupted supply chains and have been leading to considerable delays and constant postponements of your container transports for a long time, combined with considerable effort in processing.

To call these individual disruptive factors or their names:

  • Extreme delays of maritime vessels and as a consequence several adaptions of their cargo closing and cargo opening times
  • Reduced Performance of maritime and inland container terminals caused by congestion and constant work at capacity limits
  • Many works at the European railway infrastructure which lead to serious delays of trains and sometimes train cancellations
  • Strong pressure on the truck - road transport due to a significant lack of drivers
  • Lack of capacity in inland waterway transport. Container suitable barges are relocated to coal transport to ensure the national power supply => very limited additional capacity available in times of low water
  • Migration of ship capacities to the Danube
  • Lack of personal at all modalities and in the terminals, currently even worse in the summer vacation period
  • Currently: falling water levels at the River Rhine due to the aridity period in Europe

Unfortunately, these well-known problems affect our intermodal services to such an extent that planning or feasibility of transports to and from the seaports is becoming increasingly difficult despite all our efforts.
 
We kindly ask for understanding when your transports are executed divergent from your initial booking data.
 
Our Customer Service Teams repeatedly check the cargo closing and cargo opening times in order to schedule and reschedule your containers on time.
Nevertheless in some cases this is still not possible as e.g. cargo closings are rescheduled reverse, maritime terminals or even maritime ports are changed or cargo openings are adapted after containers have been loaded on our transport means.

Besides the huge effort of constant data checking we are often faced with a bad utilisation of our barges and trains in the “last minute” which means high dead freight costs.
 
Please note that we refuse responsibility for any consequential costs (demurrage / detention / storage / etc.) in the current situation. Further on we reserve our right to invoice dead freight for containers which are cancelled or shifted to another departure on short notice.

Due to the changed basic conditions we will not always be able to stick to our sailing schedules.
 
However, we will do our utmost to offer you the best possible service.
 
Thank you for your understanding, we can only solve this difficult situation together with you as partners.  
 
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Your GUT-Team