Transporters’ body All India Motor Transport Congress has called for increasing the height for open body trucks.
The move is aimed at bringing parity of open body trucks with containerised trucks and improve the economic viability of open body trucks, said AIMTC's Naveen Gupta.
Higher dimensionThis can be done by increasing the height of truck bodies on the chassis to 4.52 metres from 3.8 metres, as prescribed in Rule 93 of the Central Motor Vehicle Rules (CMVR),1989. These rules define the dimensions of trucks.
Recently, the Road Transport Ministry had increased the length for articulated car carriers from 16 metres to 18.75 metres.
This demand, which comes after the Ministry recently increased the length of car carriers, has raised concerns over road safety and the possibility of overloading.
The Indian Foundation of Transport Research and Training (IFTRT), a transport research body, has pointed out that the demand to raise the height of open body trucks is yet another move to compromise vehicle stability to carry extra cargo and overload trucks to satisfy business greed. It will sacrifice road safety, it said and added that government should bring in rules for overall truck body instead of bringing in codes for different parts.
IFTRT has been of the view that the ministry should first bring in mandatory truck body code for cabin and body simultaneously rather than engaging just cabin and chassis truck code.
“While deciding on the dimensions of the truck, an overall rule for the truck cabin and body should be brought in together. In this context, IFTRT has also called for putting on hold the gazette notification to allow longer dimension vehicles with effect from April 1, 2017 on articulated car carriers length,” the research body said.