The "chilling" reality

 

Ramesh Kumar from Greater Noida

Airconditioned driver cabin in trucks is quite common overseas. Not in India. Even reefer trucks ferrying perishable items on the Indian roads, "cool" the cargo, not the drivers! 

Around 2014, I noticed a Volvo truck with a windmill mast and blades as payload waiting at Athibelle on the Tamilnadu-Karnataka border. Volvo, it was claimed, refused to transact the sale of trucks if the potential buyers disagree with airconditioned cabins.

So, on spotting the Volvo long trailer, I halted to chat up the fairly large crew busy cooking food and washing clothes on the roadside.  

"How is the air conditioner working?" I asked. 

"What airconditioner? It does not work," responded the man whom I presumed to be the driver. 

Why? 

Once the gas got over, the company decided not to go for refills. Airconditioner is an unnecessary spend. Moreover recurring. Drivers are used to the hot and humid working atmosphere and therefore, why infuse a new habit. Put it mildly, they don't deserve it. That is the mindset of fleet owners. It has not changed much. There are always a few exceptions whose heart beats for the weakest supply chainers: truck drivers.

It is no joke to sit and steer on long hauls. Take a look at the weather pattern of India. It's summer, summer, and summer. A bit of monsoon. Winter, very little, unless one drives in higher reaches of northern India for a few months. By and large, truck chassis are bought and body-built on roadsides mostly by unregulated fabricators who pay no taxes and therefore charge less than a regular, licensed fabricator. The price difference is substantial thereby making it easier for fleet owners to opt for roadside sloppy body-builders. Many of them are of the wooden body because the metal body is costlier. 

In Indian weather conditions, long-haul truck drivers have to tackle heat from twin elements: external (atmospheric) and internal from running engines. At the peak of summer (45 degrees Celsius plus), the driver has to be ready for an additional five degrees Celsius at least. It is akin to sitting atop a burning tinplate. In the Persian Gulf, it is mandated that all outdoor activities have to be halted when the mercury touches 50 degrees Celsius. There, mostly construction activities come to a halt while trucks continue to ply because they are airconditioned. 

Recall the image of one's own mother/sister/fire at the chullah or oven in the good old days of wood-fed or coal-fed cooking in unventilated homes (that is, without exhaust fans in kitchen walls). The suffocation and sweat cannot be wiped away. Now visualize the driver at the wheels on Indian highways in a wooden/steel body with no concern for heat reduction driving at the speed of 50 km/hour during daytime. It's horrible and unbearable. 

It brought back memories of what happened at Reliance textile mills in Ahmedabad in the 1980s when assembly lines were air-cooled to make the working environment better for mill workers. Textile Mill Association babus laughed away at this novelty, little realizing how the Ambanis scripted a massive turnaround with huge productivity gains, thanks to the air-cooled workspace. I had a chance of visiting a similar facility in the south in 2018 and the cool loom room did not surprise me. Good industrial practices, huh? Surprisingly, I was told that the special air-cooling system was to "safeguard" the costly equipment installed in that facility! Machines score over men! Chalta hai!

One need not have to be a rocket scientist or a transport economist to decode the government psyche to talk of cabin comfort. Simply put, its objective was twofold: reduce the incidence of accidents on highways due to driver fatigue and secondly, make long haul trucking a desirable career option for the less or underprivileged. 

Why these twin goals were important? Today, even a high school student would disgorge the unhealthy data of India topping the global accidents table: 150,000 every year. Though commercial vehicles involved in such accidents are approx. 11 percent, the impact was not lost. Lack of structured driver training and certification in the absence of driver training schools (whatever we can spot can be counted on one's fingertips. Only, that many!) and therefore, the untrained men behind steering wheels of heavy commercial vehicles is one of the key issues. Besides lack of training, driver cabin comfort led to the much accepted but ignored concept of driver fatigue - one of the major accident-causing factors.  

Perhaps, the question that was bugging the mandarins in Parivahan Bhawan would have been how to address the looming driver shortage - 22 percent? How to bring in a certain amount of "sex appeal" to the truck driving profession? With someone like the hardnosed Nitin Gadkari as Transport Minister breathing down their necks, the mandarins perhaps have seen an ideal tool in airconditioning of truck cabins in addressing this issue.

It is not out of place to share two personal experiences: August 2012, I traveled in an airconditioned Tata Prima truck from Jamshedpur to Chennai with Tata Steel load, courtesy Toll Global Logistics. With two drivers and a running time of 20 hours out of every 24 hours (with a four-hour halt between 12 midnight and four next morning for rest for both drivers), it was a pleasant and smooth drive. 

No sweat, literally speaking. The dashboard and cabin comfort were stupendous. The driver could tilt his seat whichever way he wanted. So, no stiffness of the neck. The second experience was an interaction with a driver of a chemical tanker from Ahmedabad to Lucknow. The wannabe driver students of IL&FS Driver Training School at Ajmer gatecrashed into the Scania driver cabin and refused to climb down. Such was the look and feel and comfort. 

Yes, of course, it was air-conditioned. Do you know that at the height of summer, driving between 12 noon and 5 or 6 in the evening is abhorred by long haul drivers? They argue that it is "uncomfortable" to drive in that searing heat; not to be missed is the impact on tires when they ply on the hot highways. 

Yes, the key question is whether fleet owners would like to shell out extra for airconditioning? Will they ensure gas refill as and when required? Wise fleet owners would not and should not hesitate to introduce this revolutionary move. After all, the ultimate beneficiaries would be themselves via longer km coverage per day which would result in quicker turnaround time. So, less idling of vehicle. More money in their kitty. Drivers too would be happy to drive in such comforts. OEMs - the end-users - should be ready to relook at the freight rates in the overall interest of the most vital supply chain link: transportation and truck drivers. 

Arun Lakshman, a veteran transport consultant with the Automotive Skill Development Council, offers a different perspective on the fleet owners' hesitation to "cool" driver cabins. "Primarily, running the cooling system adds load to the engine and slows down. Remember, our trucks always overload to offset low freight offered by shippers; as it is the engine is overworking," says he. Nonetheless, creating a comfortable cabin ambiance is a necessity to improve efficiency, he adds. "Mental fatigue precedes his (driver) physical one. The misbehavior or ill-treatment by his immediate superiors even before the trip starts increases his discomfort," elaborates the ex-Maruti Suzuki senior officer who had spent over three decades dealing with inbound and outbound logistics.

A south-based second generation, tech-savvy fleet owner, reasons his decision to do away with airconditioning in his fleet: "They (drivers) keep the vehicle switched on even in waiting or idling to enjoy the comfort. It is an additional, unwanted burden on us. So we dismantled after some time."  Tsk. Tsk.

It is pertinent to point out that the manufacturers have come together under the banner of SIAM. Transporters have not one, but three bodies: one big boy viz., All India and Motor Transport Congress (AIMTC) and two junior siblings: All India Transporters' Welfare Association (AITWA) and All India Confederation of Goods Vehicle Owners Association (ACOGOA). These lobby bodies have a huge presence in the political capital of India viz., New Delhi to submit their wish list to the powers that be.  Unfortunately, drivers have no such body to represent their interests. Trade Unions such as INTUC, AITUC, CITU, BMS mostly represent organized labor's interest. Not the unorganized or non-unionized truck drivers. 

So, they are orphans, with none to voice their grievances. Therefore, it is an uneven equation: with truck makers and transporters/fleet owners on one side and truck drivers on the other. The latter realized that their interests are not looked after. Hence, their numbers are dwindling, leading to a classic supply-demand mismatch. That's where we are talking about a 22% shortage of drivers, not of trucks. High time, a benevolent view is taken regarding making the driver cabin a comfy zone to move freight with less discomfort. Yes, it will add to the final price tag. A few thousand rupees more? In the interest of saving human life from potential disaster, no amount is unbearable. 

Until the government made Corporate Social Responsibility mandatory, CSR spend was nothing to write home about. Today, the scenario is marginally different in the sense that while allocation is mandatory, not the actual spending with no penalty for not spending. Here again, the government diktat played a role which India Inc should have done on its own, with no pressure from the government via legislation. 

Driver cabin airconditioning will act as a charmer or a chalice to the wannabe long-haul truck drivers. Why not give it a  try? The sustainability of any business (not only HCV manufacturers) hinges on transportation. Almost 70 of freight movement is via surface or road transport. Rail and coastal shipping are still in infancy. Even when they take off in a big way, still they cannot eat into road transport. 

Remember, this is the age of outsourcing. Hence, components or raw materials have to be ferried to the manufacturing site from afar and wide, and, again, the finished goods have to be moved out to nooks and corners of a vast nation like India. Again, road transport. Today, the Indian economy is growing at 7 percent, and touching double-digit is not too far away. Add the government thrust on Make In India drive. We are talking about pushing the contribution of manufacturing from 16 to 25 percent. A massive leap. Manufacturing is not something like the service sector with no physical production. So transportation is mission-critical. 

India's first Special Secretary (Logistics) in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry N Sivasailam, speaking at the 2019 SIAM Annual Conclave asked the delegates: What would be the additional cost of air-conditioning trucks? Roughly Rs.50,000, someone responded. Then the second question: Is it tough to absorb this cost? Pindrop silence is how the automobile czars present in the auditorium responded. Are they not offering a hefty discount on the chassis they sell to buyers: anywhere between Rs.200,000 and Rs.500,000? Of course, depending on the order volume. Cold-hearted? am wondering.