North American ports

The Port of New York and New Jersey has introduced a central web portal to enable truckers and shippers to check container availability, export booking status and other information before drayage drivers are dispatched to terminals.

The port of Savannah has had blistering year so far, with huge volume increases and market share gains in the Southeast and nationally. But for the leader of the Georgia Ports Authority, any optimism tied to being the fastest growth major U.S. port this year must be tempered by continuing difficulties at other East Coast ports that could end up affecting Savannah

If you judge the automotive market by the trade volumes handled by mid-Atlantic ports, Americans are buying imported cars at a torrid pace, and so are Arabs. With U.S. automobile sales up 4.5 percent year-over-year to more than 10 million units in the seven months through July, mid-Atlantic ports are enjoying strong imports. New and used-car exports, too, are flourishing.

South Florida ports are readying themselves for gale force winds and a downpour of rain as Tropical Storm Erika prepares to make landfall in the Sunshine State this Monday.

The California Trucking Association tied its support of truck appointments at Los Angeles-Long Beach container terminals to creation of port-wide metrics to gauge the appointments’ effectiveness.

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 New York-New Jersey posted double-digit container growth again in July, breaking the import record it set in May and illustrating how U.S. West Coast diversions are positioning the top U.S. East Coast port for a healthy peak season.

New Jersey officials say the driver of a top loader was drunk when the heavy equipment struck and killed a dockworker at APM Terminals’ facility in the Port of New York and New Jersey earlier this month.

Dredging of the 102.5-mile river channel to 45 feet is just one of many projects under way as Philadelphia and other Delaware River ports build new terminals that can handle various cargoes or rev up long-postponed plans for new terminals.

The Port of Hueneme has been awarded nearly $1.5 million in U.S. federal dollars to its infrastructure in the hopes of boosting imports and exports — specifically to and from Central and Latin America — through the Southern California port.

The Port of Oakland’s announcement last week that it intends to open its terminal gates an extra day each week demonstrates two hard, cold facts about U.S. port operations in this era of big ships. The traditional menu of five weekday gates each week is no longer adequate to handle today’s cargo volumes, but extra gates cost money, and someone — often the shipper — has to pick up the tab.

The Port of Virginia has deployed three hybrid shuttle carriers — the first of their kind in the U.S. — at its Virginia International Gateway terminal.

U.S. West Coast congestion roiled retailer rollouts of spring product lines even after employers and longshoremen ended their showdown in late February, executives told investors during recent second-quarter earnings calls.

Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, New Jersey, says his financially strapped city wants more money and jobs from the East Coast’s largest port.

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.

The newly-formed alliance of the ports of Seattle and Tacoma increased their container throughput nearly 8 percent in July and grabbed a bit of market share from their Canadian competitors.

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.

The South Carolina Ports Authority doubled its operating profit during its just-ended fiscal year, and opened its current fiscal year in July with an 11.6 percent increase in loaded container volume.

Port of Virginia shippers have longer to drop off and pick up cargo after the state port authority announced extended gate hours in preparation for peak season this year. It’s a preemptive strike for the U.S. Southeast port that faced “significant challenges” during the summer-fall season in 2014.

A completely revamped arbitration system in the new longshore contract will significantly reduce the productivity-busting work slowdowns that have plagued West Coast ports since the previous contract in 2008, and will pave the way for terminal automation in the years ahead, according to Pacific Maritime Association President James McKenna.

Having just experienced its busiest July ever, the Virginia International Gateway Saturday closed its gates to truckers because of a power outage. However, vessel and yard activity will continue normally, the port authority announced.

West Coast ports this summer appear to have slowed the bleeding after a year of cargo losses due to contentious longshore contract negotiations, dock worker slowdowns and employer retaliation.

Containerized cargo volumes at the Port of Los Angeles dropped 1.5 percent year-over-year in July, with a 16.4 percent drop in loaded export containers accounting for much of that decline.

It will be roughly two weeks before U.S. ports can truly determine how much impact the explosions at Tianjin, the world’s tenth-busiest port, will have on traffic.

Imports at the Port of Oakland were up for the fifth consecutive month in July, which is good and bad news for the port, which has struggled to find enough hands to meet its growing demand in recent months.

The Port of Houston hopes its smooth handling of thousands of diverted Asian import containers this year will convince shippers to stick with the Texas port instead of returning to more familiar West Coast intermodal routes.

The Port of Long Beach in July had its best month ever, as peak-season cargo began to build and some cargo shifted to Long Beach from other ports.

The average time to complete a trucking transaction at Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex in July fell by four minutes from the prior month, but no one is celebrating.

Port of Virginia CEO John F. Reinhart said high volumes are expected through the summer-fall peak season after July traffic rose 8.8 percent year-over-year.

A niche shipping service between Antwerp and Cleveland is providing other Great Lakes ports with a sprinkling of containerized cargo.

Customs broker A.N. Deringer is billing its new less-than-containerload service from Hong Kong to Toronto as faster than via U.S. West Coast offerings, and free of U.S. harbor maintenance taxes and customs paperwork.

New York-New Jersey truckers and APM Terminals are exploring a pilot program that would allow drayage drivers to make expedited pickups of containers that have been pre-sorted in blocks for a single customer.

Ports in the U.S. Southeast — the country’s fastest growing — are aggressively spreading their intermodal rail reach into the hinterland, giving shippers facing higher truck rates and capacity shortages an added incentive.

APM Terminal’s Elizabeth terminal at the Port of New York-New Jersey will reopen 6 a.m. Monday after closing Friday because of the death of a dockworker.

Import cargo volumes at the largest U.S. container gateways are forecast to rise 3.6 percent year-over-year this month as shippers gear up for the beginning of the peak season.

APM Terminal’s Elizabeth terminal at the Port of New York-New Jersey was closed Friday afternoon after a top loader struck and killed a female dockworker.

West Coast ports in June continued their slow recovery from labor problems that caused them to bleed cargo earlier this year, although total container volume in June was still down 7 percent year-over-year.

The Port of Philadelphia, one of the fastest growing import ports in the U.S., is one step closer to building a cargo facility after it announced a request for qualifications.

SeaLand and APL have selected Port Everglades as the first and last U.S. call for their recently launched Americas joint service.