Hazmat Meaning: Hazardous Materials in Transport

Hazmat stands for hazardous materials: substances that pose a significant risk to health, safety or the environment if they are not handled correctly. They include chemicals, gases, flammable liquids, corrosives, explosives, oxidisers, toxic and radioactive substances, and certain batteries. The term comes from US law; its meaning in European road freight is dangerous goods, whose carriage by road follows the ADR agreement. A European dispatcher therefore meets the word mostly on bookings from American customers, on English-language freight platforms and on documents from overseas shipments.

Hazmat, dangerous goods and ADR

In content, hazmat and dangerous goods mean the same thing, because the rules on both sides of the Atlantic are based on the UN Model Regulations on the transport of dangerous goods. Europe applies them to road transport through the ADR, to rail and inland waterways through RID and ADN, and the IMDG Code applies them to sea transport worldwide; the US aligns its HMR with them in regular rule updates. Classes, UN numbers and packing groups are therefore largely the same, but the details differ, so a US classification does not replace a check under ADR. Because tunnels and some roads are closed to certain dangerous goods, routing a hazmat load is a planning task in its own right. A mixed load is planned by its most restrictive class, and a single class missing from the order can send the truck towards a tunnel it may not use.

Hazmat in US law

In the United States, hazmat transport is regulated by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), an agency of the Department of Transportation (DOT). It issues the Hazardous Materials Regulations (HMR) in Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations, parts 171 to 180. There, a hazardous material is a substance or material that the Secretary of Transportation has found capable of posing an unreasonable risk to health, safety and property in transport and has designated as hazardous. Which goods qualify follows mainly from the Hazardous Materials Table and the criteria of the hazard classes; hazardous wastes, marine pollutants and materials carried at elevated temperature are expressly included.

US truck drivers need a hazmat endorsement on their commercial driver's licence (CDL) once the load requires placards on the vehicle, or for certain select agents and toxins. They get it after a knowledge test and a security threat assessment by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), or with a valid TWIC card.

Hazmat on an order: what dispatchers check

When an order arrives from a US customer or an English-language platform marked "hazmat", the word alone is not enough to plan a tour in Europe. You need the details that ADR requires in the transport document:

• the UN number and the proper shipping name
• the label numbers, which give the class, and the packing group where one is assigned
• the tunnel restriction code where there is one, and the total quantity of each item

Only then can you check whether the driver needs an ADR training certificate, what equipment and marking the truck needs and which roads it may use. Depending on the quantity per transport unit, exemptions from part of the rules apply, so it pays to look at exactly what is being loaded.