There has been high pressure on equipment in the last month within India, which is resulting in equipment unavailability at times despite your booking being confirmed. We have reviewed the current process in order to understand how we can serve you better. Our review indicates that for us to be able to accurately advise on the equipment availability, it is important that customers provide their preferred pick-up date. Alternatively, there is a big risk that our equipment planning will not be able to accurately forecast the equipment availability and will create unnecessary customer frustration.
The process of updating pick-up date has been shared back on February 19, 2020 - India – Booking Process.
In our effort to better manage and ease out the equipment allotment process for our customers, as advised in our earlier advisory, we are now making it mandatory to mention the Container Pick-Up date when placing a booking request in the corresponding fields -
1. For HLAG.com it is either ‘Positioning Date’ or ‘Pick Up Date’ on the Cargo and Equipment Tab.
2. For INTTRA, under Haulage Details please choose a date under ‘Requested Empty Pick-Up Date’.
Container Pick-Up date is the confirmation from your side when the containers will be picked up from the designated depots / yards. We will allow a grace period of 2 days from the pick-up date to cater for any unforeseen circumstances in your supply chain and to allow you to manage pick-ups over a few days.
No pick-up will be allowed prior to the date requested at the time of booking given that equipment will be planned basis the exact pick-up dates.
Having said that, booking requests received without a positioning date in the proper fields will be automatically be rejected going forward.
To allow for smooth transition, for the next one month, in case the booking is missing the pick-up date, we will default it to ETA -8 for port origin (and ETA -10 for ICD origins).
The above will be implemented with immediate effect and vendors have been duly informed.
We are confident that this will bring enhancement to equipment availability as equipment will be available basis those dates. We look forward to your kind support to make this successful for both of us.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to your local customer service representative.