Drayage

Two chassis-leasing companies, DCLI and TRAC Intermodal, will add 3,000 chassis to their Southern California fleets in response to a request by the Port of Long Beach that the private sector step up its efforts to help relieve the growing chassis problem in the harbor.

The state of Texas will help fund the effort to continue replacing old drayage trucks at the Port of Houston with cleaner, more environmentally friendly models through a $3 million grant.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey expects within the next couple of weeks to announce details of its “winter plan” to avoid a repeat of the gridlock that crippled the East Coast’s largest port last January and February.

Congestion at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach grew worse over the weekend, with no relief in sight as peak-season container volumes descend on the largest U.S. port complex.

Trucking employment bounced back after the dog days of August, climbing 2.3 percent year-over-year in September as the U.S. labor market showed surprising strength.

New regulations on trucking capacity at Vietnamese ports are exacerbating congestion at the overloaded Cat Lai terminal in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Extortion of truck drivers played a role in congestion at the Port of Manila, a top Philippine official said yesterday.

Low ocean carrier rates are to blame for much of the congestion afflicting U.S. container ports, several ocean carriers and terminal operators said at a Federal MaritimeCommission hearing this week.

An industry group working to improve operations at the Port of New York and New Jersey appears to be moving closer to an agreement on how to implement a portwide pool of interchangeable “gray” chassis.

Container port congestion has been a hot topic this year, with issues including late ship arrivals; strikes, or fears of strikes, and their impact; terminal projects; and adverse weather conditions popping up across the world. While some congestion is caused by short-term issues, certain world regions may be at greater risk of persistent congestion in the longer term.

Old Dominion Freight Line is expanding its U.S. intermodal drayage network at ports and inland railheads, strengthening the less-than-truckload carrier's connections with global shippers.

One of the unintended consequences of the Los Angeles-Long Beach PierPass program, which includes a traffic mitigation fee on containers that move during the day peak-time hours, is that retailers send their trucks to the harbor at night specifically to avoid the fee.

American Trucking Associations Chairman Philip L. Byrd Sr. said the ATA is "bound and determined" to roll back changes to federal rules on drivers' hours of service, and to win revisions in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's Complaince Safety, Accountability program .

The Labor Department has awarded $10,225,183 to help 19 states crack down on companies that misclassify workers as independent contractors or fail to report wages that support unemployment insurance.

When APL earlier this week informed its importer customers that the APL Norway was being diverted from Los Angeles “due to congestion at Global Gateway South,” it caused all importers and exporters that use the Los Angeles-Long Beach gateway to cringe. Would other terminals in the nation’s largest port complex plunge into another round of congestion?

PierPass Inc. is launching a program in Los Angeles-Long Beach that could lower truck turn times for large importers to as little as 11 minutes, compared to the 45 to 60 minutes it generally takes now when terminals are operating efficiently.

Hub Group said it expects its costs to rise at least temporarily with the company’s conversion of its 350 California drayage drivers to company employees in order to settle litigation alleging they were misclassified as independent contractors.

A $20 million federal grant will help the Port of Seattle extend upgrade equipment to handle two post-Panamax vessels at once.

Hub Group Trucking is converting its owner-operator drivers into company employees for its California drayage operations, citing increasing threats of litigation over alleged misclassification of drivers’ employment status.

The so-called truck driver shortage largely has benefited intermodal rail — until now. Trucking’s increasing difficulty finding drivers to pilot big rigs has helped shift freight to intermodal containers, but it could also threaten future intermodal growth.

U.S. marine container chassis lessor Direct ChassisLink Inc. plans to expand into ownership, management and leasing of 53-foot domestic equipment, and says newly acquired equipment and technology provider REZ-1 will play a key role.

Truckers in Los Angeles-Long Beach have complained for years that turn times are lousy — oftentimes two hours or longer. Marine terminal operators are adamant that the average turn time is less than one hour. Transportation consultant Val Noronha says both claims are accurate; it’s the measurement that’s flawed.

The 132 transportation and logistics companies that made the Inc. 500/5000 list of fastest-growing U.S. companies this year prove that size and speed aren’t always twinned.

Intermodal chassis provider Direct ChassisLink Inc. has acquired REZ-1, which for 20 years has supplied technology for intermodal equipment management and service.

Thirty million times since 2005 a truck entered or left a Los Angeles-Long Beach marine terminal during off-peak hours, relieving daytime congestion around the largest U.S. port complex, thanks to the Offpeak program run by PierPass.

In the latest instance of drayage-related disruption, violence flared at Ningbo’s Beilun Container Port as thousands of striking truck drivers clashed with riot police and smashed the windshields of trucks crossing a picket line. The past week’s protests brought the world’s sixth-largest container port to a standstill, with carriers reportedly diverting ships.

The Ningbo container truck driver strike is escalating with trucks clogging the terminal gates and forwarders warning customers to expect missed sailings and a shortage of boxes as carriers divert some calls to Shanghai.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Federal Maritime Commission is moving forward in a fledgling effort to reduce long truck wait times at some ports in the U.S. by holding a forum in Southern California next month and another in Baltimore in the fall.

Work is starting on implementation of an industry task force’s recommendations on ways to improve performance at the Port of New York and New Jersey.

One of container shipping’s most glaring inefficiencies is the countless unproductive trips by truckers who deliver an import box to an inland destination but return to port with no backhaul. Rick Knapp thinks he has a solution.

A $668.5 million tunnel that allows drayage trucks to bypass congested downtown streets opened with minimal fanfare yesterday at PortMiami.

Port Metro Vancouver’s penalty system for terminals is cutting truck turn times and drawing attention from other North American ports struggling with drayage challenges. And congestion seen earlier this year at Rotterdam has continued, prompting diversions and surcharges, and the congestion is spreading to other ports in the North Europe range.

The first half of 2014 saw the start of several stories that JOC.com will most likely be covering for the next year and perhaps beyond.

Operations at the APL terminal at the Port of Los Angeles were back to normal this afternoon after several weeks of congestion that frayed the nerves of harbor truckers and tarnished the reputation of a terminal that had been considered a model of efficiency in the industry.

Manila’s choked container port will finally have some relief as sweeper ships arrive to clear the thousands of empty boxes clogging the city terminals.

A long-awaited tunnel linking Miami’s port to the interstate highway system will be open for business at the beginning of next week, after months of delays.

Facing growing port congestion, the Port of Hamburg is implementing a far-reaching plan to better manage truck traffic of containers moving in and out of its terminals.

TRAC Intermodal CEO Keith Lovetro says he’s optimistic a “gray” chassis pool can be created for the Port of New York and New Jersey, but that chassis providers should have a say in how the portwide pool is governed.

Drayage drivers serving New York-New Jersey port terminals said at a weekend forum that they need quick action to reduce turn times that require them to sit in long queues for several hours a day without full compensation.