Considering the obvious hazards of firework transportation, and indeed every aspect of the manufacture, storage and transportation of fireworks, it might be expected that firework manufacturers and distributors would be more careful than most in checking the qualifications and experience of the transport companies they use for their deliveries.

I would expect a responsible firework distributor to fully vet their transport suppliers to ensure that they fully understand their responsibilities under ADR and have access to a competent Dangerous Goods Safety Advisor, to offer their own advice to the transport company on the safe transport of their goods if necessary, and above all to ensure that the transport company is fully aware of the training that their staff and subcontractors are required to undertake before transporting fireworks.

I was surprised then to read a message posted on one of the leading courier industry websites looking for 70 vans to do 172 journeys over a 3 day period delivering fireworks. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, although I didn’t think that the company were likely to find 70 suitably qualified drivers on the website in question. I was slightly concerned at this stage that although the company had mentioned the need for various items of safety equipment, they hadn’t mentioned any need for training.

The next day the company followed up their posting with the information “You do not need ADR because the NEC (explosive content) doesn’t exceed 50kg per 3.5 tonne vehicle”. I’m not a DGSA, or even ADR qualified, but this had me very worried on two counts. Firstly, the large multishot fireworks that can be bought from any supermarket typically have an NEQ of over 1kg. Only 50 of these fireworks would exceed the stated 50kg limit, yet the courier company are looking for vans capable of carrying the equivalent of several hundred times that amount. Secondly, and more worryingly, the company were still giving the impression that no training was necessary to carry these goods.

Although they have correctly stated that full ADR isn’t needed as long as the load is below the ‘small load’ threshold, and even identified that safety equipment is still needed, they seem to have completely overlooked the general training (’awareness’) requirements of 8.2.3 of ADR. Of course it’s always possible that they’re planning to put all the drivers through an awareness training session before they’re allowed to collect the goods, but due to the company’s silence when this subject was brought up I suspect that they had no such plans.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this sort of thing happen – I wrote about an incident a few days ago – but this is the first time I’ve seen a reputable company advertise this type of work to unqualified personnel in such a blatant manner.

There’s still a lot of misunderstanding of the ‘small load’ and ‘limited quantity’ exemptions to ADR, although I’ve written about them in the past and the HSE have a very useful information page explaining the issues.

The golden rule is: IF YOU’RE IN ANY DOUBT AT ALL WHETHER YOU’RE QUALIFIED TO CARRY DANGEROUS GOODS THEN YOU’RE NOT QUALIFIED ENOUGH TO MAKE THE DECISION.

Packages marked with white LQ diamonds can be carried without special training. FIREWORKS CAN NEVER BE CARRIED UNDER AN LQ EXEMPTION.

Loads under the small loads thresholds can be carried with ‘general training’, also known as ‘awareness training’. You’ll still need safety equipment etc, but if you’ve had the awareness training you’ll know that.

There are no fireworks that can be carried by road for hire and reward without the driver and all members of the vehicle’s crew having had a minimum of ‘awareness’ training. For large loads, and even small loads of fireworks in Transport Category 1, full ADR training will be required. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

According to this report Mr Wilcox thinks so little of his drivers’ capacity for learning that he believes that ADR training is wasted on them and they should only be trained ‘what to do in the case of an emergency’.

He goes on to say “Drivers are not the best classroom attendees, and whatever is crammed into their heads to get them through the exam is promptly forgotten a week later”. I wonder how Mr Wilcox thinks that his drivers managed to gain their existing professional qualifications, not to mention how he thinks they’ll cope with the new driver CPC qualification. However does he think they manage to drive his company’s vehicles competently and safely if they’re not capable of retaining knowledge for more than a week?

Mr Wilcox makes the case that the traffic staff should have the training because “after all, it’s their decision what is carried and when”.

That might be how Mr Wilcox operates his company, but its certainly not best practice and it’s a possible sign of a company operating on the fringes of legality. It’s for the driver, and no-one else, to decide whether it’s safe for him to take a load out. The driver bears the ultimate responsibility for the safety of his load, his vehicle and himself and no under-trained cretin in a traffic office 200 miles away is entitled to take decisions on his behalf.

It’s this type of attitude – ‘the traffic office knows best’ – which is behind some of the sloppiest and most unsafe practices in the transport industry: drivers’ hours infringements, speeding, overloading, health and safety breaches – all because of the ‘just get it done’ attitude in the traffic office and the pressure put on drivers to do what the traffic staff tells them to do.

Only yesterday I had a call from a same day courier who’d been sent in to an end user to collect a load on behalf of another transport company. The carriage of the load clearly required an ADR trained driver and both the consignor and the transport company were aware of that fact. The owner-driver, without any ADR training and without access to a DGSA was told that she could carry the load without ADR training. Fortunately the driver phoned a friend for advice and was referred to me; I’m not a DGSA but it was clear to me straight away that she shouldn’t be carrying the load.

I’ve seen this happen more times than I can remember – the traffic office numpty mutters something about a load being limited quantities that can be carried without training, ignoring the distinction (whether accidentally or not) between limited quantity packages and small loads. While an experienced commercial driver will (hopefully) know enough to tell the traffic office where they can stick their hazardous goods, the same day courier with a year or so experience driving small vans might well take the word of the traffic staff, or of their customer, as gospel.

I’ve had the exact same experience myself as a courier many years ago. I was sent (by the third largest transport company in the UK) to collect hazardous goods from one of their customers and told that no ADR was required. The second time I went to collect from the customer they asked me if I was ADR trained and virtually threw me off the site when I told them I’d been told that it wasn’t required.

I’d agree with Mr Wilcox that the traffic staff need at least as much ADR training as the drivers, but that doesn’t mean that the drivers need less training. I’d argue that there should be a ‘supervisory’ level of ADR training, above that of a driver but not necessarily to the level of a DGSA, and that every transport operation should have a member of staff trained to that level involved in the planning, organisation and despatch of every load containing dangerous goods.

In the case of UN1292 it’s maximum 5 litre containers packed in boxes of maximum 30 kg. You can’t classify them as LQ yourself and just carry them though – they have to be classified as LQ by the shipper and marked with LQ diamonds

I’d have said it needed a minimum of ‘awareness’ training to carry it.
 

I think that most inert , non-toxic compressed gases are LQ1, so for you to be able to carry them under the Limited Quantity exemption they’d need to be under 120ml, packaged as multiple units and marked up as ‘LQ’. So basically you can’t carry anything bigger than a box of sodastream cartridges without training.

Your customer’s confusing the Limited Quantities exemption with the Small Loads exemption, which allows you to carry them with just ‘Awareness’ training if they’re below the thresholds laid out in ADR.
 

There are two types of partial exemption from ADR for carrying small quantities of ADR goods; Limited Quantities (or ‘LQ’) allows you to carry genuine LQ goods, marked with a white ‘LQ’ diamond, outside the scope of ADR with no formal training other than training in (or understanding of) normal Health & Safety procedures. It’s up to the shipper to decide whether it’s LQ or not and to mark the packages appropriately. If there’s no LQ diamonds on the packages then it’s not LQ.

The other partial exemption from the full scope of ADR is goods carried under the thresholds laid down in 1.1.3.6.3 of ADR and amended by the Carriage Regulations. To carry goods under this ‘small loads’ exemption you still need ‘Awareness’ training (which you’ve suggested that you’ve got) and access to a DGSA. If you’re not sure whether you can carry the goods with just ‘Awareness’ training then you’re meant to consult your DGSA to find out.

If the goods weren’t marked as ‘LQ’ and you’ve not got access to a DGSA then you shouldn’t have been carrying the goods anyway, no matter how small the quantity.
 

But you don’t need to bother with any of that. All you need to know is that if the customer says it’s in LQ packages then you can carry it, subject to your insurance. If not then you need to subcontract it to someone with relevant training and access to a DGSA.
 

‘ADR’ (Accord Européen Relatif au Transport International des Marchandises Dangereuses par Route) isn’t a law or a set of rules that’s binding on us, it’s an agreement that’s binds the ‘Contracting Parties’ (the countries that are party to the agreement) to pass laws which implement the requirements of ADR.

ADR is implemented in UK law by ‘The Carriage of Dangerous Goods and Use of Transportable Pressure Equipment Regulations 2004′ as amended. This is known as the Carriage Regulations. These govern ALL journeys in the UK carrying Dangerous Goods – whether it’s a domestic journey or part of an international journey. The difference is that enshrined in the UK law are certain exemptions/variances/derogations which are allowed for WITHIN THE TERMS OF ADR for domestic journeys.

The full scope of ADR is implemented within the UK by the Carriage Regulations, with the addition of some exemptions/changes which apply to domestic transport AND ARE PART OF ADR. Similarly the other Contracting Parties to the Agreement have their own exemptions/changes which apply to domestic transport only and which are part of ADR.

Without the Carriage Regulations there would be no UK law on the transport of Dangerous Goods and we could ignore the whole concept of ADR while we’re in the UK. Other countries also implement the requirements of ADR by passing their own domestic laws and we’re governed by them while we’re in that country.

In short, ADR applies as much to UK domestic journeys as it does to international journeys; it’s just that international journeys are governed by individual countries’ individual laws which implement ‘vanilla’ ADR while domestic jouirneys within those individual countries are governed by their own (still agreed within ADR) implementations of slightly varied rules.
As for CMR, which the thread was actually about, contrary to popular belief there is no legal requirement for ‘CMR insurance’ if you take goods abroad. In fact there’s no such thing as ‘CMR insurance’ – just insurance to cover your compulsory liability under CMR, which as Geoff quite rightly points out is about £7/kg unless your customer has contracted with you to provide a higher level of cover.

Most standard GIT policies exceed the requirements of CMR within the policy’s ‘Territorial Limits’ – which usually includes the whole British Isles, including the ROI. This can sometimes be extended, without any mention of CMR, to other EU (or at least Western European) countries at minimal cost.

Without ‘awareness’ and access to a DGSA you can’t carry any quantity at all UNLESS it’s packed in LQ packages – and paint etc is often (but by no means always) packed in LQ packages. The shipper should be able to tell you. If it’s in LQ packages then it’s outside the scope of ADR and you can carry what you want; in the UK anyway.
 

Whether your insurer agrees that they’re not hazardous maybe another matter.

I suspect that most insurance companies will decide that you’re not covered even for LQ packages unless you pay extra.