HANDS ON MANAGEMENT STYLE
Our management team as well as our company leadership are actively involved in every aspect of the business including its day-to-day operations and remain accessible to clients at all times.
We are hugely dependant on our extremely proficient client facing team of service advisors who serve as a single point of entry for all updates and control functions pertaining to your shipment.
HIGH VALUE CARGO ESCORTS
All deliveries and collection of High Value Cargo are actively tracked and measured against a comprehensive method statement in order to ensure an incident free delivery. Where values are high, we are able to deploy our owned covert escort crews to ensure safe delivery of your shipment. In the case of containers, where values are excessive, we recommend that our clients engage with 3rd party service providers who in turn will clamp containers with purpose designed tamper- proof container tracking units and independently monitor the movement of your container from collection up to the point of final delivery. We treasure your shipment and therefore have an obligation to fervently protect it, as if our very own. When you engage our services in this exceedingly specialised field, know that you have engaged with trustworthiness, of a hard-to-find kind.
TREC OR TREMCARDS
Shipping & General supplies transport emergency cards for every imaginable UN referenced product. We are a supplier of Transport Emergency Cards which we stream to a wide range of clients to whom we offer a transportation service for hazardous products. Transport Emergency Cards (TREC or TREM) must be carried in the cab of any vehicle carrying dangerous goods in quantities exceeding exempt thresholds. The fundamental purpose of a card is to instruct the driver in the event of an incident. They also aid emergency response workers, as they carry information which is specific to the goods being carried.
As the operator/carrier we have a legal obligation to ensure that cards are in fact appropriate to the load. It is vital that our road crews read and understand the card for any product before loading it. At S&G we have a social responsibility to ensure that our crews undergo intensive training in this field as well as partaking in regular refresher courses in order to ensure that we remain up to date with industry best practices and regulatory changes at all times.
CRANEAGE & RIGGING
Having entered the power utilities & heavy industries market some 15 years ago, a need to invest in our own crane trucks became an essential strategic investment. Our equipment is fully certified right down to the very last sling and D-shackle. Our crews are fully trained in operations, rigging, safety, risk management, supervisory, firefighting and first aid 1&2. The result being that we are completely self- sufficient whilst our crews are on site. The safe delivery of your shipment is as equally important as the safe return of our crews. We never negotiate nor compromise on our safety or the safety of those lives with whom we may come into contact with in our line of duty.
HEAVY-LIFTS
We have owned resources for the provision of heavy lift services to assist clients who require this adhoc service from time to time. Lifting capacities under our direct control at our Germiston based facility range from 1 ton up to 50 tons. As can be expected, all of our heavy lift services are conducted with hair- splitting attention to detail.
TRUCK WASH
We’re obsessed with trucks, all kinds of trucks. In much the same way as a surgeon needs his scalpel, we need our trucks, as they are central to the success of our business.
The tools of our trade so they say. As your transporter involved in the last mile delivery of your shipment, ensuring that we deliver with clean trucks is a deliverable that we dare not skirt.
We’re proud to own a truck wash on site with wash crews that are equally as fanatical about clean trucks rolling off their wash bay floor. We understand that our trucks are a representation of you, our customer. On the last mile, rest assured that dirty, unpresentable trucks will be the last of your worries.
SOLAS WEIGHBRIDGE
On the 1st July 2016, a new legislation came into force that affected anyone exporting goods via containers. Set out by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the ruling states that every container needs to be weighed and proof of weight provided before the goods can be legally loaded onto a ship. Should any container be loaded onto a ship without a proof of weight, it will be in direct violation of the Safety of Life at Sea Convention (SOLAS). Shipping & General owns a 22m multideck scale enabling us to provide VGM certificates for exporters as well as conduct axle weighing in order to establish inconsistent weight distribution within packed containers.
MATERIAL HANDLING & REACHSTACKER
With the use of our owned rollback equipment and lowbeds we are able to supply to clients a range of material handling forklifts or reachstackers ranging in size from 1.5 tons – 45 tons inclusive of an operator. Our recent acquisition of a Kalmar 45-ton reachstacker adds to an already existing fleet of 3 Linde full container handlers. We pride ourselves on an exceptionally well maintained fleet all of which are available for short, medium, or long-term hire.
TAIL/SIDELIFT EQUIPMENT
A fleet of tail-lift equipped vehicles enables us to provide a deck-to-ground service to clients who do not have forklift equipment to offload their shipments. Our tail-lift trucks are equipped with an additional crew member and trucks are supplied with a pallet jack in order to facilitate mobility of your shipment on arrival at its delivery point. We are also able to provide sought after sideloader container handling equipment to clients who wish to have their containers grounded to facilitate easier unpacking/packing.
24 HOUR CONTROL MONITORING
Our Shift Controllers monitor our fleet from our Head Office Control Centre . This enables us to monitor rest intervals and ensure that our road crews are swiftly road bound and, in a position, to deliver your shipment on time, with little exception. All vehicles are fitted with real-time satellite tracking and on-board computers coupled with onboard video telematics . Our equipment enables our Shift Controllers to apply effective route controlling techniques that maximise vehicle productivity and utilisation. The Control Centre team along with our state-of-the-art fleet technology and documented operational processes enable Shipping & General to provide a safe, profitable yet cost effective solution to all of our customers.
ONBOARD TRUCK CAMERAS
Our long haulage vehicles are each fitted with 4 state of the art on board cameras & telematics all of which is a clear demonstration of our no-nonsense approach around cargo security. It can be said that the benefits are indeed 2-fold, it enables actionable intelligence to be delivered to our control rooms which aid us in operating our assets more efficiently, furthermore video footage and telemetry information also serves as a pivotal coaching tool that is used to continuously upskill our drivers and improve driving behaviour.
DUAL TRACKING SYSTEM
Even though just about every telematics system in todays market will provide regular health checks on the
functionality of the onboard telematic system, at Shipping & General we have pushed the envelope even further and have opted to have 2 tracking units installed per vehicle, each with separate networks in order to ensure maximum uptime of our tracking systems. Some see it as too many bells and whistles, we simply see it as leaving nothing to chance.
