After a program aired by a national television news magazine on the evening of October 10 exposed long-term overloading of crude oil by Jingbian County Xingda Comprehensive Development Co., Ltd. in Yulin City, Shaanxi Province, the Yulin Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government immediately convened an overnight joint task force composed of transportation, market regulation, emergency management, and public security departments to rush to the scene and conduct a special investigation, strictly punish violations in accordance with the law, and hold those responsible accountable.

At the same time, a citywide effort is underway to draw lessons from this case and carry out comprehensive inspections and rectification across the entire hazardous goods transport industry chain, so as to safeguard industry order and protect people's lives and property.

Since the Central Work Safety Assessment and Inspection began its unannounced inspections in the second and third quarters, the effort has been stricter and more stringent than before, and for the first time a special inspection of regulatory enforcement issues has been launched. Road transport of hazardous goods is a high-risk industry, and the state has therefore established strict standards to prevent major accidents at the source, but inspection teams found in some places problems including overloaded hazardous goods vehicles, falsified equipment inspection reports, and loopholes in electronic waybill management systems, all of which require serious attention.

Jingbian County Xingda Comprehensive Development Co., Ltd. is located in Yulin City, Shaanxi Province, and focuses mainly on crude oil transport, with more than 60 tanker trucks. When reporters accompanied the central inspection team there in mid-June, no problems were initially apparent. But after logging into the back-end electronic waybill system, the records were found to be unusual: from January 1, 2024 to June 18, 2026, the tonnage utilization rate was always 68.3%.

Yuan Yulu, legal representative of Jingbian County Xingda Comprehensive Development Co., Ltd., said: "If it is filled up, it exceeds the limit; if filled by volume, it may reach 20 tons." A 68.3% tonnage utilization rate means the tanker carried only about two-thirds of the crude oil its tank could hold. Loading less to avoid overloading is understandable, but wasting a large amount of capacity over a long period does not fit commercial logic. So how much were they actually carrying? The inspection team asked to see the actual delivery notes. Under the team's request, the company's person in charge could only produce a few real transport documents. The invoicing party was an oilfield, and Xingda was transporting oil for it. A comparison indeed revealed problems. Taking a tanker whose tail number was 3943 as an example, its factory report stated a rated load of 14 tons, while the receipt showed it carried 22.14 tons, an overload of 58%. The assessment and inspection team then checked tankers with license plate tail numbers 6163, 6782, and 7684, and found that all were overloaded, with overloads ranging from 42% to 58%.

A tanker is a closed vessel, so why would it be overweight by so much? Taking the tanker with tail number 3943 as an example, how could a tank with a 14-ton load capacity hold 22 tons of crude oil? After extensive efforts, the reporter found a surveillance video accidentally recorded on the day of the inspection on June 18, which showed that two tankers had the same license plate number, both 3943, one running on the road and one under inspection, but the two tank bodies differed in shape, length of reflective strips, and position of flammable labels. Clearly, they were not the same tank body at all. Whether this involved illegal replacement of tank bodies requires further investigation by relevant departments.

Reporter: "How many tons do you roughly ship each month now?" Yuan Yulu: "More than 20,000 tons in total each month." Reporter: "When did you start transporting goods?" Yuan Yulu: "We started in 2010." Reporter: "It has been 16 years now. Are you aware of this overloading?" Yuan Yulu: "Yes." Reporter: "Then how do you explain this?" Yuan Yulu: "We will rectify it immediately."

Experts say hazardous goods vehicles are different from ordinary trucks, and once overloaded the consequences are far more serious and can easily trigger major accidents. Wang Jinrong, an expert with the Central Work Safety Assessment and Inspection Team, said: "Once the medium or goods inside leak, it can cause combustion and explosion, and may even involve highly toxic substances, creating very great social harm." Therefore, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Emergency Management, and the Ministry of Public Security treat the management of hazardous goods transport vehicles as a top priority.

So why was Xingda's overloading problem not discovered in time? In early September, the Central Work Safety Assessment and Inspection Team returned to Jingbian County for a deeper investigation. The investigation found that the main reason was failure at four levels. Using the tanker with tail number 3943 as an example, it shows how it got past these four checks. First, source loading review failed. When this vehicle went to an oil extraction station to load oil, the station should have reviewed its rated load, which is 14 tons, but in fact loaded 22 tons. This clearly violated Article 29 of the Measures for the Safety Management of Road Transport of Dangerous Goods, which states that "the loaded goods shall not exceed the approved load mass of the transport vehicle." Clearly, the oil extraction station did not fulfill its relevant duties.

Second, the transport company did not truthfully fill out the waybill. In China, for dangerous goods to be transported on the road, a paper or electronic waybill must first be obtained, and the "one vehicle, one trip, one waybill" system must be strictly implemented. The waybill for the tanker with tail number 3943 was filled out by the carrier, namely Xingda. Although it carried 22 tons of goods, it filled in only 12 tons in order to obtain an electronic waybill. Xingda was clearly lax in management and review. In this way, the tanker with tail number 3943 slipped past the second check and reached the third: the electronic waybill system.

What is the electronic waybill system? Chen Yu, director of the Freight Division of the Shaanxi Provincial Road Transport Development Center, said: "It can mainly show the person, vehicle, and goods information of the shipper and carrier, information on the category of transported goods, route information, and the vehicle's trajectory during operation." The state promotes the construction of electronic waybill systems in various places precisely to carry out full-chain dynamic supervision of road transport of dangerous goods. However, because Shaanxi's electronic waybill system is not networked with the source weighbridge at oil extraction stations, it cannot obtain real front-end information, so it can only enter and retain information, not verify it, and naturally cannot detect overloading. Chen Yu said: "We are only a data reporting system and cannot detect overloading. When the ministry designed the electronic waybill system, it did not include this function. Overloading can only be reflected through road inspections and source loading." In some parts of China, to close this loophole, local regulations have already required electronic weighbridges of hazardous goods loading and unloading enterprises to connect to regulatory platforms, which then automatically compare with the weight declared in electronic waybills to form closed-loop warnings. Shaanxi is precisely missing this key link.

Finally, the fourth check: road inspection. Could the traffic management department responsible for road inspection detect the overload? The answer is that it is very difficult. First, there are many hazardous goods vehicles. By the end of 2025, Shaanxi Province had nearly 25,000 registered road dangerous goods transport vehicles, with more than 2,000 in Jingbian alone. Second, traffic management departments only conduct spot checks on suspicious vehicles, and Xingda mostly operated in remote areas, allowing it to overload for a long time. Precisely because the shipper turned a blind eye, the carrier concealed the truth, the waybill system only retained records without verifying them, and road inspections were only spot checks, the overloading problem was very difficult to detect. Chen Yu said: "Later, through upgrading and renovation, we will remedy the shortcomings."

In addition to overloading in hazardous goods transport, the Central Work Safety Assessment and Inspection Team also found shocking cases of falsified inspection reports for hazardous goods vehicles. According to regulations, the body of a hazardous goods vehicle must undergo an annual inspection, and the tank body must undergo periodic inspection every two years. The inspection is carried out by professional institutions, which issue inspection reports, an important measure to ensure vehicles operate safely on the road. Hazardous goods vehicle inspections are much stricter than those for ordinary trucks, with dozens of inspection items, and the vehicle technical grade must reach Grade 1 before it can operate. Wang Jinrong said: "Relevant national departments must attach great importance to this, because accidents involving dangerous goods transport vehicles are prone to occur and occur frequently. First, policy shortcomings must be further addressed, especially by forming comprehensive governance. For example, transportation, market regulation, emergency management, and public security departments must join forces and strengthen the construction of coordinated enforcement mechanisms."

The problems reflected in the program are not isolated cases in this round of central work safety assessment and inspection. Hazardous goods transport concerns public safety and allows no room for侥幸. Whether enterprises use system loopholes to file false reports and overload vehicles for long periods, or testing institutions issue false inspection reports, both cross the red line of public safety. If any link in hazardous goods transport fails, it can lead to a serious accident. In response to the various safety hazards identified, relevant departments have required localities to strictly investigate and punish violations, urge the completion of regulatory shortcomings, consolidate safety responsibilities across all parties, and firmly hold the bottom line of work safety in hazardous goods transport.