Drayage

As the initial experience indicates, North American port extended gates adoption, despite increasing container volume and truck congestion, is coming in fits and starts.

A reservation system is one tool to improve fluidity, according to port officials, but the trucking community believes restricting access is a step in the wrong direction.

The Los Angeles and Long Beach executive directors promised shippers and truckers they would deliver several action items within six months to relieve mounting congestion.

One shipping-trade group representing foreign carriers in trade to/from India, questioned why authorities went live with the revamped, single window system without an adequate trial-run process.

“We use the data to make efficiencies happen,” Weston LaBar, CEO of the Harbor Trucking Association, told the JOC Port Performance North America Conference this week in Newark, New Jersey.

Montreal’s extended gate hours have improved fluidity since their introduction in September. Now, amid rising volume and construction, among other factors, port officials would like to see the off-hours cargo pickup continue to trend higher to further decease congestion.

The electronic logging device transition period has passed and the trucking industry has found a new normal. On the rails, intermodal volume has grown each week, year over year, except week one. What do the aforementioned mean for rates and capacity for each?

Among other findings, the McKinsey report provided further evidence supporting the thesis that automation technology incorporation in container shipping, and in particular at marine terminals, will likely be part science and part art.

There is almost assuredly no one system that will solve inefficiencies, especially in a large port complex with a dozen independently operated terminals like Southern California, speakers at the JOC Port Performance North American Conference in Newark, New Jersey, said this week.

Shippers will have to scramble after Union Pacific Railroad and Norfolk Southern Railway announced the elimination of more than 425 domestic and nearly 100 international origin-and-destination interline pairs in multiple phases.

“PCS 1X is a cloud-based, new-generation technology, with a user-friendly interface. This system seamlessly integrates eight new stakeholders, besides the 19 existing stakeholders from the maritime, trade on a single platform,” a Ministry of Shipping statement said.

Virginia officials are working through teething problems — including unused booked appointments — as the port strives to boost fluidity.

The Federal Maritime Commission stopped short of any regulatory action on detention and demurrage. Instead, a task force would meet to “refine commercially viable demurrage and detention approaches.” There were several findings, however, which validated cargo owner concerns and provide reasons to be optimistic that teams of stakeholders will be able to find resolutions.

The new service highlights a state-wide effort to attract cargo destined for Florida but that moves through other gateways.

The port authorities involved believe the current total is good enough for now, but how long that remains the case, and what action they would take moving forward, depends on several factors.

It’s still too soon to evaluate the flat-fee system, but so far it has not caused a surge in daytime traffic. What’s more, front-loading that’s increased volume, owing to the threat of US tariffs, has maintained night volume, or as one key trucking official put it, “You show up to get the container when you can get the container.”

The roadblock to launching a new chassis pool to serve growing volumes at the ports of Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, underscores the challenges of shaking up traditional chassis pricing.

The dashboard, which went online Monday, is an upgraded and streamlined version of the port’s four-year-old PortTruckPass website that was created by a consortium of the operators of the six terminals in the port to collect and disseminate logistical information.

The terminal operator at the Port of New York and New Jersey is implementing several measures after a month of longer-than-reasonable turn times for truckers.

In its decision, the port also offered information regarding what it would need to see to resume the program.

Among other productivity improvements, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust's ship turn times and container dwell times are considerably shorter than a year ago.

The terminal, which does not normally process trucks and containers on the weekend, opened the gates Saturday from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. and plans to do so every Saturday until the end of the year. Furthermore, the first Saturday’s turn time reduction was substantial.

The port said it is working with Maher Terminals and Port Newark Container Terminal, the two terminals in the port that use straddle carriers, to create a vehicle that would be programmed to recharge itself after making a certain number of container moves.

Ports and regions are devising creative and needs-specific solutions to container shipping's chassis issue — a longtime bottleneck/trouble spot in the supply chain. Here is the Port of New York and New Jersey's progress.

Harsh weather and the electronic logging device mandate — requiring truck drivers to record their of hours of service digitally and cease use of paper logs to track drivers' time behind the wheel — have put pressure on Chicago and other US markets.

However, officials noted that daily cargo movement at the terminal continues to remain no less than the normal average.

“Railroads and ports are spending billions of dollars for infrastructure. All of that of that is great, but let’s focus more on what is needed to get drivers into and out of the port. Railroads should look at their in-gates and out-gates. Most of the delays occur in the queue lines,” Patrick Maher, executive vice president of Gulf Winds International, told attendees at the JOC Inland Distribution Conference 2018 on Tuesday.

PierPass, the oldest extended-gates program in North America, was launched in 2005 to increase throughput capacity at the largest US port complex while diverting a sizable portion of the truck traffic from the peak daytime hours in order to relieve traffic congestion on local freeways and roads.

The new Harbor Trucking Association-Milestone pool at LA-LB is improving truck turn times and round-the-clock access to a variety of chassis types during the current peak season.

A chassis split creates two extra stops for truckers, wasting their on-duty hours, reducing asset productivity, and restricting available capacity to shippers.

The port authority, after discussions with rule-implementer the New Jersey Department of Labor, is disseminating detailed information to truckers on the new rules, which the authority believes will have little impact on the drayage fleet and won’t affect many truckers.

While these two related issues are present to various degrees at other gateways, the problems are magnified in the largest US port complex, where peak-season volumes now being handled at the 12 container terminals are contributing to an annual volume of more than 16 million TEU.

Justice for Port Drivers, a Teamsters-sponsored group that has promoted picketing and other job actions over the past five years, will participate in job actions at the ports, two motor carrier facilities, warehouses, and rail yards beginning Monday morning.

Owner-operators want regulators to tackle detention time by shippers in addition to hours-of-service flexibility.

The addition of Milestone Equipment Holdings to the OPEN Choice Equipment Agreement-North East pool would take the pool a step closer to a pool of chassis from several providers that would be “interoperable,” meaning that truckers could pick up or drop off chassis from more than one provider at one or more locations.

Set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2019, the bill will discourage retailers and other shippers from contracting with the companies that misclassify drivers by making the beneficial cargo owners jointly liable for any fines assessed on those operators.

Front-loading, probably prompted by concern about tariffs, has affected US intermodal transport this peak season, as well as ocean transport, creating a quieter rail September. However, shippers should note there are some signs of conditions heating up in a key section of the United States that could be a harbinger.

The Teamsters union, which pushed for the rule change, believes a large proportion of the port’s trucker owner-operators could be found to be employees under the new rule. Truckers say the impact could range from merely creating an “administrative headache," to prompting some to leave the port, and perhaps the industry.

The decision means the price of a chassis in the United States will likely rise by a substantial amount.

As the US chassis sector evolves, no one method of operation fits all ports/regions, but one appears to offer truckers an advantage.