Methodology

Where reports come from

Participating drivers, dispatchers and transport operators submit structured reports through the public form. Each submission is stored against a port, terminal and issue category.

What counts as a report

One report should be submitted for each affected booking, truck or collection. A report includes an incident date, terminal, issue category, trucks affected, delay information and a description.

How duplicate reports are handled

The system flags possible duplicates for moderator review using terminal, incident date, approximate time, issue category, booking reference (if provided) and description similarity. Suspected duplicates are not deleted automatically.

How reports are reviewed

Moderators can mark a report as under review, verified, resolved or rejected. Rejection removes a report from public views. Resolved reports remain in the historical dataset.

What “verified” means

A verified report has been reviewed by SA Trucker staff and accepted as a credible industry submission. It is not an official finding against a terminal operator. Primary credibility statistics use verified and resolved reports.

How delay hours are calculated

Delay is stored in minutes. If start and end times are provided, delay is the difference between them (crossing midnight where needed). Public totals convert minutes to hours.

How trucks affected are calculated

Each report records the number of trucks the reporter says were affected by that incident. Dashboard totals sum those values for the selected period. This is not a unique truck count across all reports.

How official responses are handled

Official terminal updates are stored separately, labelled as official communication, and cannot change industry statistics, delete reports or edit historical submissions.

How personal information is protected

Reporter name, company, email and phone are stored in a private reporters table. They are excluded from public pages, public report detail, CSV exports and search indexes for staff areas.

How historical data is retained

Historical reports are not deleted when they are resolved. The trends pages are intended to become a long-term record of Durban container-terminal trucking conditions.