Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Transport has blamed the premature wear of its roads on heavy Chinese trucks.
Some 60 thousand trucks are currently registered in Kazakhstan, including around 40 thousand heavy Chinese-made trucks.
The weight of the latter when combined with overloaded cargo hovers around 35-40 tons and thus exceeds the maximum weight of 25 tons permissible on the asphalt roads.
As a result, the country’s roads are sustaining serious damage and traffic of concrete mixers and truck cranes of similar weight only exacerbates the problem.
Back in December 2022, it became law that all vehicles with a capacity to carry 12 tons pass through specially installed automated weight measurement stations.
To ensure more rigid transport control, the ministry plans to significantly increase the number of weight measurement stations.
As part of a pilot scheme, six new stations have been installed on the peripheries of Astana this year.
