The new Law requiring cargo-generating companies to install weighing systems, approved by the Chamber of Deputies in July 2025 and now in its second constitutional process in the Senate, received the support of the National Confederation of Truck Owners of Chile (CNDC).
The provision seeks for companies to have on-site weighing systems, particularly those that carry out activities involving the land transport of 60,000 tons or more annually at each loading or reception point, such as maritime, lake and land ports, airports, warehouses, road and rail terminals, and any other type of transfer center.
In this context, the CNDC stated that “our guild expresses its broadest support for the bill currently before Congress. We hope that the Senate will approve it in the same way the Chamber did. To clarify and highlight that the weighing law aims to remedy a historical injustice, namely that transport companies and drivers stop bearing the payment of high fines when inspected on the road, for carrying loads over whose tonnage they have no influence whatsoever, as they are sealed containers.”
“Transporters cannot be held responsible for load management problems at ports and transfer stations, as these do not belong to them, but to their principals. In other words, if vehicles are sent onto the road with tonnage exceeding the permitted limit, it is not their responsibility, as they neither generate nor transfer the load, they only carry it,” the organization emphasized.
From the Confederation they added that “today the Law makes a distinction, due to an omission that was denounced during the first government of then President Sebastián Piñera, between ‘cargo generators’, who actually produce what is to be transported, and ‘transfer stations’ which, although they do not generate, dispatch the containers that drivers transport. The government understood the sense of urgency to correct this situation and sent the bill to Congress over a decade ago.”
“Until the Law corrects this state of affairs, what is inappropriate continues to be perpetuated, making drivers and transport companies pay for loads which, as noted, they cannot influence. However, the owners and those who transfer the loads remain free of responsibility. The purpose of the bill under consideration is precisely that those who have such responsibility fulfill it,” they stated.
“We call on the senators to approve the current bill and remedy an injustice that currently affects a universe of 40,000 cargo transport companies, of all sizes, which are ultimately the ones that make possible the transport of 95% of the goods circulating in the country,” the CNDC emphasized.
