Auto cos hit a bump as car carriers get resized

Automobile manufacturers are facing a shortage of car carriers — those trundling giants on wheels, which move vehicles from factories to sales outlets — as the trucks head back to fabrication shops to be “right-sized” to conform to the new Central Motor Vehicles Rules.

Most carriers’ length needs to be reduced by nearly 5 m to the 18.7 m prescribed under the new rule effective from April 1. This could take up to 10 days for every carrier.

The shortage is temporary, but manufacturers have been hit since April 1 , said an official of an automobile company.

In the absence of uniform rules earlier, transporters had extended the length of the 15,000 ‘truck-trailers’ or ‘tractor-trailers’, to over 23 m in some cases, depending on manufacturers’ needs.

However, the new rules restrict the bumper-to-bumper length of car carriers to 18.7 m to ensure smooth movement and safety on highways, sources said.

The draft Gazette notification was issued by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways on April 18, 2016.

A 23-m-long car carrier could transport 10 compact cars like Grand i10, Eon and Alto, but a “right-sized” one can accommodate only eight such cars, which translates into a 20 per cent drop in car-carrying capacity.

Taken with the 10 per cent increase in the number of new vehicles rolling out of factories, the overall supply gap is about 30 per cent.

This supply constraint could last for 45-90 days, by which time most of the vehicles will be resized. The supply to the market also depends on transporters’ cash-flow situation, sources said.

Transporters were hoping that the government would relax the restriction or extend the implementation date, but that did not happen. Consequently, transporters woke up only at the eleventh hour,, sources said.

It will cost nearly ₹40,000 to resize each vehicle. Deepak Ramaswamy of Deepak Agencies, which has around 10 car carriers that ferry mid-sized vehicles, says the revenue loss will be of the order of 25 per cent since each vehicle can carry only six such cars against eight earlier.

“I expect rates to be renegotiated with manufacturers. In fact, manufacturers themselves may come forward to increase the price given that it is an extremely regulated market,” Ramaswamy added.

The resizing of the behemoths is happing in lots, and Regional Transport Office officials have as yet not started cracking down on the unaltered vehicles, he noted.

The responsibility for resizing the car carriers is on OEMs, who are required to use only legally approved carriers. The new rule, however, is silent on the penalty for violation, said an industry source.

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