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Container weighing

6K views 27 replies 15 participants last post by  RHP 
#1 ·
Hi everyone,

Pretty soon i have to conduct a debate on container weighing in the shipping industry. My side of the argument is that container weighing IS NOT of benefit to the shipping industry. . . . .can anyone provide me with good arguments for this please.

Thanks and best regards

John N
 
#4 ·
Good Lord , this is a subject one can talk for hours about.

The argument that you are hoping to defend is , in my mind , about 100 %
wrong. Not only is weighing of containers beneficial to the industry , it is VITAL.

I've lost count of the number of containers that have been subject to a spot
check and shown to be widly inaccurate.
I was lucky - being the manager of a container terminal that serviced only our
own fleet , so could order these spot checks at will.

Draft surveys at completion of loading regularly showed a difference of 600 Mt
on a "paper "loaded weight of 24000 MT.

As part of the customer relation team , also used to visit shippers
who had problems re stowage , lashing and securing etc. In my
experience , they had little or no idea of the weights they were loading
as long as the container was full to the door. Mostly , they were not even aware of the extra weights of pallets , securing gear etc.

Glad I'm not on your side when you try to defend your premise.
 
#5 ·
I fully agree with Pilot mac, it is very important to ship stability.
For a simple example, if a ship is carrying 4000 containers and each one weighs just one tonne more than the declared weight, that's 4000 tonnes extra that the stress/bending calculations have not allowed for, which could have disasterous consequences.
 
#6 ·
Whilst we are on about underdeclared weights which present a stability hazard as well as a minor financial gain to the shipper perhaps we can also pillory the shysters that misdeclare the contents of the containers leading to inappropriate stowage of DGs and defeats the objects of segeregation.

Sorry John but I would have anyone who failed to declare or mis declare weight or contents strung up (if that were still legal and not the subject of a Stormy Weather thread)!!
 
#7 ·
I had a quick look at your profile "noworries182" and I noticed that you are a recently qualified deck officer at present serving at sea.
Far from "noworries" I have major worries that a recently qualified deck officer could possibly argue that container weighing is not of benefit. Container weights are regularly mis-declared by shippers and this can lead to catastrophic results with regard to stability and the stresses and strains on a ship.
I worry about the training and teaching of cadets these days when such critical areas are apparently dismissed as being of no benefit!
 
#10 ·
"noworries182", I have just re read your initial post and I may have done you an injustice. If so, I apologise.

From your post it appears that you may have been put in a position of partaking in a debate and have been told the point you are arguing. If this is so please accept my condolences as you are surely on a losing team!
 
#13 ·
Chaps, the original post refers to a debate and John N, has merely asked for any facts or theories one might make to support his side of the argument. It does not say he agrees with the proposition.
E.g., I am sure not weighing boxes, speeds up the loading process, thus keeping costs down, making our Xmas pressies cheaper. After that, I'm struggling, John.
 
#17 ·
Firstly, may I thank you all for your quick reply's, I thought I wasn't going to get any back!

May I also add, that I am actually FOR the weighing of containers however, I've been landed with this task which despite the various comments above was decided by myself, my lecturers and a senior MAIB inspector to be the easier side of the argument. Many of the arguments FOR weighing are based purely on safety, without any consideration for commercial pressure, insurance issues or multi-modal transport considerations.

Off the subject may I also raise the concern of people being far too judgmental on myself and newly qualified deck officers alike. Without knowing anything about me, many of you have decided that I am in no position to debate this subject! For starters its a debate and we hope to get out of it, the advantages and disadvantages of container weighing.

Thanks again to those who have provided me with educated and relevant information, it all helps.

John N
 
#18 · (Edited)
I've seen some disastrous results of mis-weighed containers, including instances of cargo literally falling out through the bottoms. I once saw that happen spectacularly in Long Beach to a container that had been overfilled with bottles of wine.

The worst culprits are in the military. Apparently, troops in the field simply fill containers up until they're full, and don't even bother about the weight at all. Once, in Honduras, I saw a 25-ton fork lift attempt to hoist a loaded 20-foot container, and the fork-lift almost capsized. When I asked the Army officer in charge how much that particular container weighed, he said that he had no idea. He admitted that it had never even occurred to him that it was an issue. Some time later I was not surprised to hear that a crane fell over on that same dock, killing it's Army crane operator.

The commercial side can be just as bad. Once, in Livorno ("Leghorn" to the British) the brakes on a container crane failed, dropping an overloaded container onto the dock. It ended up embedded about two centimeters into the asphalt. Fortunately, the container didn't happen to be spotted over a ship or a truck at the time!

In most modern container ship operations the ships' officers don't have time to work out the cargo stowage. Shore-side staff calculate the pre-stow, and the ship's personnel pretty much go along with whatever the shore-side people come up with. However, we had some pretty bad experiences with that sort of thing in some of the Med ports when I was sailing for Farrell Lines. The longshoremen had a bad habit of placing the heaviest containers, often loaded with Italian marble or building tiles, on the top instead of on the bottom, with disastrous results to the ship's stability. We adopted the policy of issuing the Mates a list of the container numbers and their corresponding cell numbers, and had them check the placement of the individual cargo containers as they went aboard. It was a pain in the neck, especially when they had several cranes working at once, but it was also a necessary precaution.
 
#19 ·
Klaatu83,
I would agree that the Military are by far the worst when it comes to container packing and stowage.
Not only have I seen numerous cases of wildly inaccurate/guestimate weights, I've also had numerous cases of undeclared DG's - specifically Class 1, and no, I'm not talking about fireworks!
 
#20 ·
The most dangerous cargo I ever encountered was actually listed on the manifest as "Special Fireworks", a consignment of which we transported to the Persian Gulf during the 1991 Gulf War. It was so nasty that it had to be stowed on deck, completely separate from all the other cargo, which consisted of assorted types of ammunition. It seemed odd to be transporting "Fireworks" of any sort to a war zone. I had no idea what they actually were until after we arrived, when I finally got the opportunity to ask one of the military people who were stationed there. They turned out to be those flares they drop out of the backs of aircraft in order to decoy heat-seeking missiles!
 
#22 ·
Klaatu83:-
You say that "in most modern container ship ops the ship's officers don't have time to work out cargo stowage. Shore side calculate the pre-stow and ship's
personnel pretty well go along with whatever the shore side people come up
with ".

Having been on both sides of the fence , whilst you are correct in that the
pre-stow is done ashore , this was always subject to the ship's approval.
Any changes required by the ch.mate were always immediatly implemented.
 
#23 ·
Having been on both sides of the fence , whilst you are correct in that the
pre-stow is done ashore , this was always subject to the ship's approval.
Any changes required by the ch.mate were always immediatly implemented.
This was the same in Rotterdam when box handling started in the early seventies, on steam driven computers. Had some interesting discussions with Class(allsorts from LRS down), when trialing the Bremen Express class. My responsibility was the ballasting system which included automated trimming tanks port and starboard high wings. The trimming-tanks were supposed to keep the ship upright within one degree and if possible to fifteen minutes! Tests proved that settling tank operations in the engine room could throw the ship a bit too far so standard was set at one degree.

Then there were the problems with heavy and light boxes, these being over or under given weights on the computerized BoL. one could suddenly find lists coming on out of nowhere as the ship loaded or unloaded, this causing the trimming system to overwork and sometimes spill seawater onto the deck through the tank vents. double checking the weights of the recently unloaded boxes solved the problems.

All this sort of cockup had to be worked into the programming of the, "loadicator", of the ship and then copied to all the shore establishments who were dealing with that ship. At the time the ship's cargo plan was on one or two big floppy disks, these had to go ashore before the ship could unload.

I hope some of this history might be of use.
 
#27 ·
Some container operators are more notorious than the others declaring only cargo weight in their containers (net) that is coming into computer systems, disregarding tare weight of the box. Difference can be considerable, even for smaller vessels. Besides, it is difficult to fight computers: once I spotted that box on a flat-rack container had much bigger weight painted by manufacturer of the unit than declared by terminal (again, supposedly including tare weight of the container). I asked terminal operator to change it but he could not do it because "it had been like that in the system". O.K., I could have done this myself in ship computer, but in the next port I would receive a floppy disc with old weight again. How long such a box can keep your mind on itself? And how many you can actually spot or weigh to compare? Later we have them, metal boxes, on our beaches...
 
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