Call it the “mega” age. The 13,000-TEU-plus vessels that have spawned the formation and expansion of alliances such as the P3, G6 and, most recently, Evergreen’s joining the CKYH are the latest examples of a container shipping industry taking dramatic measures to control its fate.
I’ve been reading various articles on Southern California’s operating problems related to chassis, terminal conditions, truckers and an unfortunate internal report of a container sitting at a terminal in Long Beach for 10 days after being discharged from the vessel awaiting a trucker to take it to the railyard for movement by train to Chicago.
If there’s a theme to this year’s TPM Conference, it’s that 2014 is the year of the game-changer in international logistics. The changes the industry is grappling with as we congregate in Long Beach this week are profound and will define the main challenges confronting shippers, carriers, third-party logistics providers and others possibly for years.
It would be a convenient story line to link one of the major reasons for this winter’s gridlock at the ports of New York-New Jersey and Los Angeles-Long Beach to deficiencies in infrastructure. But the topic that yielded seaports a rare mention in last month’s State of the Union address is just one factor in the winter of discontent that users of the three largest U.S. ports are currently enduring. Of much more immediate impact is the anarchy surrounding chassis, and the root cause of that is to be found not on land but at sea.
This month the world has watched as Olympic skaters have spun and jumped, skiers have swooshed downhill and Russia has delivered undrinkable water and unusable, unsanitary toilets to visitors in Sochi.
NEW DELHI, India—A yellow truck festooned with black tassels and hex symbols to ward off bad luck passed our van on the right as we jounced over the potholes that slowed us to a crawl on the road between Jaipur and Jodhpur. The truck was similar to many of the trucks I saw on a three-week road trip in the northern Indian states of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh this winter, except for one thing: It was carrying a 20-foot container, the only box I spotted in hundreds of miles of tortuous driving. The blue box bore the familiar APL logo.
As the 2014 U.S. election season begins to take shape, the possibility of immigration reform is growing. How would reform impact the clearance of imports and exports at the U.S. border?
From my perspective the JOC article titled “NY-NJ Port Mess ‘Worst Ever’” does a significant disservice to a number of the participants within the harbor that are attempting to address a very difficult situation, which in large measure was brought on by events beyond their control.
While disputes between trucking companies and marine terminal operators over turn times may be nothing new, the excuses for inefficiency have gotten old. While we have argued and pointed fingers, cargo volumes have increased, congestion and gridlock has continued and the outside world looks on, wondering when this industry is going to get its act together. We would suggest, it’s time to try something new. Instead of excuses and finger-pointing, let’s try cooperation.
Amid the deluge of year-end statistics highlighting the yawning economic gap between the European Union’s more solid northern member states and its debt-stricken southern half there’s one that looks, at first glance, like a mistake — container traffic.
Forget the economy, there’s a new threat to growth in global trade and to the manufacturers that produce it, the retailers that import it and the carriers that move it.
Transportation of marijuana may remain illegal under federal law, even between states where it has been legalized, but is it legal to transport it in intrastate commerce within those states?
Controlling the Chaos
The Gathering Storm
History in the Making
Q&A: By Whom the Bill Is Paid
Chassis Chokepoints
The Real Value of Added Value
Culture Wars
Emerging India Has a Long Way to Go
Immigration Reform’s Threat to US Trade
Winter Has Hit Terminals, Too
Marine Terminals Cannot Ignore Efficiency Question
South European Container Ports — An Unlikely Success Story
Protect and Defend
Q&A: The Lowdown on Pot
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