More than a decade after India?s largest truck trailers came on road to transport cars from factories to dealers and ports, the government has woken up to the fact that they are ?illegal?, simply because the motor vehicle rules have not been changed.

These vehicles, which are the backbone of India?s automobile revolution, do not find a mention in the Central Motor Vehicle Rules (CMVR), 1989. So every time the large trucks with their load of eight to ten cars come out of factory gates, they are liable to be penalised. The state police forces do that routinely, citing grounds of non-conformity to the general rules regarding dimensions mentioned in the CMVR. But at the same time, these vehicles are duly registered with the state transport authorities.

There are around 15,000 such vehicles in the country. Maruti Udyog Ltd, for instance, uses a fleet of around 6,000 vehicles. On an average, around 300 vehicles leave the factory premises everyday.

The ministry of road transport and highways has, therefore, begun framing regulations for these registered vehicles, by amending the CMVR. Saroj Kumar Dash, joint secretary in the ministry, told FE, ?These vehicles do not find any mention in the rules. Owing to this, they face problems in movement from one state to another.? The move, as he explained, is aimed at ensuring a seamless movement of the vehicles from one state to another.

Why did this situation emerge? Under Rule 93 of CMVR, the maximum length of double-decked rigid body truck must not exceed 16 metre in the case of truck trailer or a tractor trailer combination. Its width should be a maximum of 2.6 metre. The present dimension of a double-decker tractor trailer is far bigger at 22 metre, with a height of 4.75 metre and a width of 2.85 metre. The original dimensions were written at a time when the road lengths were far narrow and the auto boom had not happened. But despite the new giants having hit the road at least a decade ago, state and central government forgot to change the rules. Dash acknowledged that this has been exploited by states, which have started penalising the operators for not complying with the general regulations mentioned in CMVR.

According to the amendments done in CMVR in 1991, the states were empowered to grant exemption to motor vehicles from the provisions of rule 93. Also, such exemption given by one state was bound to be honoured by other states. But this did not happen and instead the states impose fines on the vehicles in order to earn revenues, even though the vehicles are duly registered. As the number of such vehicles has mushroomed with the consequent automobile explosion, the situation has become difficult.

?In order to ensure that they (the operators) do not face unnecessary harassment and get penalised by the state authorities, we are defining such vehicles and framing regulations for them. The dimension and gross vehicle weight of such vehicles will be prescribed,? Dash said.

As a first step, the ministry has issued a notification that will be valid for six months. The notification prescribes an interim dimension of these vehicles, which is as per the current size of the trailers.

The chassis of these vehicles are mostly manufactured by companies like Ashok Leyland and Tata Motors. Says RN Rao, director, (sales), Ashok Leyland: ?We stick to the dimension norms prescribed in CMVR, and manufacture only the chassis of the vehicles. These are six metres long. They are temporarily registered for transit and the concerned transport authorities of the states subsequently register the vehicles once the fabrication as per the users need is done, After delivering the chassis, we do not know what use are they being employed for. However, we do not honour the warranty at the time of servicing if we find that overloading has been done.? This is true. Ministry officials said they were aware that the manufacturers of such vehicles were often not aware of the dimensions specified in the rules.

But that has not affected the safety and reliability of these trailers. Car companies said these vehicles travel at night and at a very low speed. Since 1989, a number of exemptions on the basis of gross vehicle weight have been granted, but there have been hardly any accident involving these vehicles.