Drayage

Harbor truckers in Los Angeles-Long Beach sincerely want terminal operators to succeed in their ground-breaking plan to develop a system of appointments throughout the harbor. But they fear that the logistics involved in coordinating as many as a dozen stand-alone trucker appointment systems will be very difficult to arrange.

National Retail Systems is putting an all-electric truck into drayage service at the Port of Los Angeles for retail shipper IKEA, which has aggressive sustainability goals.

In a high-risk, possibly high-reward attempt to manage truck flow and reduce congestion, 10 of the 13 container terminals in Los Angeles-Long Beach on Thursday adopted a trucker appointment system action plan with the goal of establishing a system of appointments throughout the harbor beginning in 2016.

The Port of Oakland “strongly supports” its marine terminals’ plans for Saturday truck gate operations but has two big concerns,Chris Lytle, port executive director, told the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission.

Oakland port terminals plan to subsidize Saturday operation of truck gates by imposing a weekday gate fee modeled on one pioneered by the decade-old PierPass program in Southern California.

Los Angeles-Long Beach is moving slowly toward a dual system of drayage in which some drivers are becoming unionized employees, while others prefer to remain independent contractors. Eventually, the result could be a sufficient pool of drivers to serve the 13 container terminals in the largest U.S. port complex, resulting in service and pricing consistency for the shippers that depend on harbor drivers.

A recently-launched Federal Maritime Commission Section 15 investigation of a terminal operators discussion agreement could have a chilling effect on the mandatory inspection of chassis by International Longshore and Warehouse Union mechanics at West Coast ports.

Drivers for the Southern California drayage company Eco Flow voted this week to join the Teamsters Union. This development is not a surprise because Eco Flow was formed on the employee-driver model, but it is nevertheless a victory by the union in its attempt to organize drayage companies across the country.

Daseke Inc., the fastest growing U.S. trucking company, is merging with Bulldog Hiway Express, an open-deck and flatbed carrier with extensive port drayage operations in the Southeast.

Chassis leasing companies and California truckers are asking federal agencies to act quickly to prevent what they say are illegal chassis inspections by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union at U.S. West Coast ports.

As chassis issues continue to haunt the West Coast, it seems increasingly likely that shippers will pay for chassis storage.

Harbor drayage companies on the U.S. West Coast feared that a provision in the new International Longshore and Warehouse Union contract mandating longshore inspections of chassis would cause uncertainty and delays for truckers, but they didn’t imagine that it would happen so quickly.

If harbor trucking companies and marine terminal operators hope to survive in the cutthroat port environment, their numbers must be reduced. The industry needs fewer, larger, better-capitalized companies, according to a Southern California trucking executive.

If marine terminal operators had their way, the days of individual truckers entering their facilities in search of specific containers would be over, replaced by a model in which containers are peeled off the top of a stack and delivered to truckers without regard to consignee or destination.

Demurrage and per-diem detention fees at gridlocked U.S. ports have turned into a multimillion-dollar hot potato. Cargo interests, truckers, ocean carriers and marine terminals are locked in noisy, seemingly nonstop argument over responsibility for the fees. It’s a complex problem with no easy solution — but plenty of finger-pointing.

In an attempt to ensure sufficient availability of chassis during the summer-fall peak-shipping season, the Port of Long Beach Thursday will meet with potential bidders interested in managing a peak chassis fleet.

While besuited port industry executives milled about hotel ballrooms at the Virginia International Trade Symposium Thursday, truck-driving men and women in shirtsleeves marched in protest on the streets outside.

Southern California truckers who said they were improperly charged late fees for containers they couldn’t return on time to gridlocked ports received mixed decisions in the first arbitrators’ rulings on their cases.

The same developers that debuted a Web app to cut down on truck drivers’ empty runs are about to launch a new truck-focused traffic app.

Direct ChassisLink has expanded its Direct ChassisLink pool in Southern California and has contributed to the pool formerly included in the Grand Alliance pool. The Direct ChassisLink pool now has 28,000 units in Los Angeles-Long Beach.

An employee-based trucking model backed by venture capital that was announced Monday in Los Angeles-Long Beach is expected to gain traction in harbor drayage, but it won’t dominate the industry any time soon.

XPO Logistics will nearly triple its drayage capacity through the acquisition of Bridge Terminal Transport for $100 million.

Eco Flow, a Southern California harbor trucking company backed by a venture capital firm in Los Angeles, on Monday announced with the Teamsters union the formation of a motor carrier with employee drivers.

Drivers who walked off their jobs on Monday at three harbor drayage companies in Southern California to protest alleged misclassification and wage theft returned to work Friday, according to a statement by the Teamsters-affiliated Justice for Port Truck Drivers.

The picketing by independent harbor truckers serving the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach got some attention in Congress after a congresswoman on Wednesday highlighted their efforts and asked whether the federal government could come to their aid.

By most standards, congestion at the largest U.S. port complex is significantly less than it was during the winter, long truck turn times persist.

Picketing by truck drivers seeking union status continued Tuesday at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, indicating that the campaign by the Teamsters union to organize harbor truckers throughout the harbor is not going away anytime soon.

A Teamsters-supported organization that is attempting to organize owner-operator truck drivers in Southern California said Monday a number of drivers were picketing the yards at several trucking companies, as well as marine terminals in Los Angeles-Long Beach.

Encouraged by a ruling late last year that found drivers at a Southern California drayage company were misclassified as independent contractors, a Teamsters-affiliated group is calling for a strike vote on Saturday by drivers throughout the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex.

The harbor trucking licensing program at Port Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, took a hit after a federal judge ruled the port’s selection process was unfair and that rejected applications need to be reconsidered.

The Feb. 20 tentative agreement on a new coastwide labor contract was a godsend to harbor truckers in Los Angeles-Long Beach, with turn times improving noticeably, according to researcher Val Noronha.

New York-New Jersey port truckers are demanding longer gate hours and more lenient demurrage rules to ease congestion that has kept drayage drivers waiting for hours in miles-long lines outside the GCT Bayonne container terminal.

Container terminals at the Port of New York and New Jersey are fighting a seemingly unending battle with congestion that has accompanied record import volume and is producing costly delays for truckers and cargo owners.

TRAC Intermodal is forming its own chassis pool in Southern California, but the new entity will be added to the “pool of pools,” or neutral chassis arrangement, that was launched at the ports on March 1.

Truck turn times in Los Angeles-Long Beach are slowly improving from the dark days of November and December, but numbers released Tuesday by the Harbor Trucking Association of Southern California show the average truck visit to the harbor in February was still 50 percent longer than a year prior.

The Port of Baltimore will combine a $200,000 U.S. Transportation Department grant with $300,000 in state funds to continue a program subsidizing replacement of old drayage trucks with newer, less-polluting vehicles.

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are partnering with cargo interests, terminal operators, harbor truckers and the railroads to hasten the day when marine terminals become transit facilities rather than storage sites for containers.

Signs that the container logjam in Southern California is beginning to break are showing up on the truck spot market, as deconsolidated loads come up for grabs at West Coast warehouses.

New York-New Jersey port truckers are growing frustrated with delays accompanying a late-winter cargo spike that container terminals are struggling to handle.

Most container terminals in the Port of New York and New Jersey will keep truck gates open Tuesday — a longshoremen’s union holiday — as they struggle to clear backlogs caused by high volume and bunched ship arrivals.