A Question of Cargo
A good recovery can go very bad if contents are mishandled
By Lynn Ford
Clearance speed has become a critical component of incident management and nothing slows down the speed of a recovery like a pile of cargo that’s been spilled. Assuming the cargo isn’t hazardous; it has to be dealt with and cleared by towing experts. That means recovery operators have to include cargo assessment as part of their scene protocol, say Gay Rochester of North Carolina.
Rochester has done hundreds of rollovers in her 24-year career and handles bills of more than $10,000 routinely, she said. She earns her money by saving trucking and cargo companies’ money and protecting their liability by carefully documenting the scene.
“Delays are occurring when decisions are being made on how to do the recovery, particularly with cargo,” Rochester said. “Do you save it? Dispose of it? People are afraid to make the decisions and they’re not contacting the owners of the cargo to get them into the communication loop”
“Cargo viability assessment” is the term for weighing the cost of salvaging against the cost of disposing of cargo. It involves understanding what can be salvaged and what can’t, and having a firm grip on the cost of salvage on the scene versus the cost of delaying traffic. Sometimes the delays dictate moving cargo to a satellite site for salvage.
Rochester is a well-known expert on expediting highway clearance. She and her husband Ed have owned Rochester Automotive Towing and Recovery in North Carolina for 24 years. Fifteen years ago, they started Incident Management and Recovery Concepts (IMARC) for the management and coordination of on-site recoveries. “We handle all the documentation at the scene. We take photos, communicate with the press, handle the driver and risk liability”, Rochester said.
“We make sure the transportation company has the right representative’s in the loop, bring in needed equipment, and expedite clearing.”
Rochester has lots of experience, North Carolina ranks fifth in transportation accident s in the nation. In one rollover, at a cloverleaf at Interstate 40 and Interstate 77, Rochester recalled, the roadway was full of “big green marbles looking things- fiberglass beads for Down Corning.” The beads had been in barrels that spilled.
It was “Virgin Cargo,” Rochester said or material that was used in the making of other products. “If these products were corrupted or dirty or out of their packing, they can’t be used for their original intent.” Rochester contacted the shipping company, and the trucking company, which confirmed her decision to dispose of the materials. “Instead of doing a tedious recovery of putting the beads back into the container, we shortened the recovery by bring in an all-terrain loaded with a bucket… those are the kinds of decisions you have to make.”
Sometimes, shippers will override your decisions. In one case, a load of charcoal briquettes overturned and Rochester ordered the cargo disposed of. “The insurance company wanted us to re-pallet what was salvageable,” she recalled. “I refused to do that. It would have tied up the scene too long and been too laborious.” Instead, Rochester said, she agreed to take the material to a satellite location and re-palletize it there. In the end it was determined the insurance companied erred in salvaging the material at all because it was too costly.
In another case, insurance representatives gave a tow company authority to re-palletize glass beer bottles. The bill was $27,000. “That never should have happened,” Rochester said. “That’s disposable. No one’s going to put that back on the market.” Rochester said there were also strict federal drug laws regarding prescription drugs. “If they roll and are corrupted, there’s no choice. It’s burned under armed guard.”
During training sessions at a Department of Transportation conference earlier this year, the questions of cargo protocol on pharmaceuticals was posed to recovery agencies. “Every agency was represented and not one person knew,” Rochester said.
“Someone might have spent 10 hours re-palletizing drugs that will have to be burned.”
Knowing cargo rules becomes an important part of expedited clearance of roadways, which has been identified as critical to safety, the economy, and even national security. “Maintaining traffic flow is critical,” Rochester said. “If an interstate is shut down for more than three hours, the Pentagon has to be notified… We play a huge role in clearing these highway scenes and people’s lives are in jeopardy. It’s not just the economic impact”
(Article reprinted with permission of Towing & Recovery Footnotes. Article printed in November 2004 edition, page 9)
