Port of Los Angeles

“This is the reality today. We must focus on service levels to make sure terminals are fluid,” Steve Balaski, senior business development manager for containers at the Northwest Seaport Alliance of Seattle and Tacoma, told the recent Western Cargo Conference of freight forwarders and customs brokers.

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.

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.

By improving connectivity in the harbor through more on-dock rail, smoother hand-offs from the vessel to rail, and more timely and accurate data flow, West Coast ports will offer shippers a more attractive package for shipping discretionary cargo through their gateways to the eastern half of the United States, Los Angeles and Long Beach port executives agree.

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

The key to the top-tier ports’ dominant share of Asian imports is that ocean carriers have chosen the four gateways as the first call inbound on their services from Asia. And that ensures that retailers and other large importers receive what they value most.

The issue of public money for a private function was raised, but the port noted that Southern California ports have various subsidy programs in place for environmental reasons, such as to encourage carriers to plug into shoreside electrical power to reduce emissions at berth.

Space is so tight today in the eastbound Pacific that some beneficial cargo owners are paying higher than spot rates to get their shipments on vessels leaving Asia. However, there is a qualifier to that trend shippers should know about.

It took the new management team at APL’s Pier 300 in Los Angeles only three months to improve truck turn times from the worst in the harbor to the fourth best among the 12 terminals. And they accomplished it by deploying a "customer focus/consumer focus" strategy.

Yusen Terminals in Los Angeles, where Union Pacific is adjusting to a consolidation of shipments from the three former lines that formed the Ocean Network, is a major focus of the railroad’s attention.

Beneficial cargo owners and truckers in Southern California have experienced only spot chassis shortages, and given current import projections, this condition should continue through the peak season. However, store-door contracts that designate the use of specific intermodal equipment provider chassis are still an issue, and this condition could worsen if non-vessel operating common carriers expand their use of door contracts with chassis clauses.

As with many other consumer industries, it’s not that the toy industry pie is shrinking, it’s merely being split differently.

In 2017, US imports of household goods jumped as home projects and construction soared on economic strength, and the outlook calls for continued growth in 2018.

BCOs fear imposing indirect source pollution restrictions on warehouses and distribution centers on top of LA-LB clean-air restrictions will raise the cost of shipping through the Southern California gateway.

A key US retailer group asked the Federal Maritime Commission to turn down the new fee structure with a mandatory appointment system, or at least delay a decision, and it offered several reasons for its stance.

Chassis support facilities are part of a larger trend, certainly on the US West Coast, to repurpose properties that may not be suitable for marine terminals for ancillary functions. Moreover, the ultimate goal, if achieved, would represent a business model advance for the sector.