Hard workers in the scorching heat

Fully loaded containers

Loading goods into containers

On August 2, the summer heat was at peak with scorching sun. On the cargo platform in the warehouse of the Yiwu-based Xingye International Freight Forwarding Company, porter Yu Gaofeng and his partner moved the cargo weighing several tens of kilograms from the pallet to the container that was about to be sent to Germany. Filling this 60-cubic-meter container requires 50 pallets of cargo and takes about three hours.

Due to the heat, Mr. Yu needs to take pauses and hydrate from time to time.

“The goods come from all over the country, and once we load the containers, the trucks will move to Yiwu West Railway Station to load onto the Yiwu-Xinjiang-Europe CRE trains,” said Mr. Yu. He also explained that this year’s business is going well. Warehouses are constantly loaded and emptied for shipments. Work has gotten so busy that he has to rush to the warehouse to load goods at 4:00 a.m. every day. He needs to load five or six containers a day, which keeps him busy until 8:00 p.m. The goods he helps load are generally transported to Germany, Spain, Russia, and five Central Asian countries.

So far this year, the Yiwu Platform of the CRE trains has launched 1044 convoys, averaging a daily departure of more than five trains. Since 2013, the cumulative shipment volume has exceeded 6,000 trains, and the shipment volume has reached 498,000 TEUs. (Text and photo by Wu Fengyu—Yiwu Business Daily, English text edited by Kendra Fiddler)