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No relief for LA-LB port congestion
Source: JOC, Bill Mongelluzzo
Congestion at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach grew worse over the weekend, with no relief in sight as late peak-season container volumes descend on the largest U.S. port complex.
“The vessels keep arriving…,” said John Cushing, president of PierPass Inc., which manages the extended gates program for the 13 container terminals in the port complex. Cushing said terminal operators are spending millions of dollars and taking extraordinary steps, including running very costly “hoot owl” shifts from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m. to relieve congestion in their container yards. But the cargo keeps building up at the terminals.
Each terminal operator has a slightly different story to tell. Some terminals say the congestion ebbs and flows depending upon chassis availability. A terminal will get enough chassis for several consecutive days to clean out its yard, but then the equipment supply dries up and the terminal is congested again.
“There are times when the imports are not moving. The numbers are outrageous —6,000 to 7,000 containers just sitting at the terminals,” he said.
Another terminal operator said he is working only two cranes each week against a vessel with a capacity of 10,000 20-foot containers, rather than five cranes as he should be, because the yard can not absorb any more boxes. Vessel operations are slowing down to the point where some terminals are in danger of having to tell vessel operators to slow down their arrivals because the ships can not be handled on schedule.
Ocean carriers earlier this year exited the chassis business in Los Angeles-Long Beach and New York-New Jersey, selling the assets to chassis leasing companies. Terminals on both coasts immediately began to report that they did not have enough chassis, not because the overall supplies in the harbors were reduced, but because the business relationships involving cargo interests, shipping lines, terminal operators and chassis providers had changed.
Suddenly, truckers were told by a terminal that the chassis they needed were no longer being stored at the terminal, so the truckers had to make an extra trip to a location where the chassis suppliers stored the equipment. In instances where a terminal had chassis, many more chassis than usual were being “red-tagged” as being out of service and in need of repair.
The extra moves that longshoremen must make each day to clean up the container backlog are sucking up skilled labor, and terminals are reporting that the PMA has begun to rationalize the dispatching of positions like top handlers and rubber-tired gantry operators. Those positions can not be handled to part-time workers, known as casuals.
Terminal operators say a shortage of truck drivers both in the harbor area, and at the warehouses in the Inland Empire 50 miles from the ports, is causing the dwell times for containers and chassis to skyrocket. Alex Cherin, executive director of the Harbor Trucking Association, said the HTA saw the driver shortage surface several years ago as a result of the clean-trucks program in Southern California. The truck and driver population of mostly owner-operators went from 15,000 to less than 10,000 as non-compliant trucks were phased out.
HTA took actions such as helping to develop a driver training program at a local community college, but the overall problem was masked by the economic recession. Now that the recession is over, the driver shortage is all too apparent, he said.
Cushing said that PierPass is meeting with chassis providers, truckers, shipping lines and terminal operators in an attempt to work out at least a short-term solution to problem. After having met with executives of the three largest equipment providers — Direct ChassisLink Inc., Flexi-Van and Trac Intermodal — PierPass was told a long-term solution to the chassis problems will not materialize until early 2015, Cushing said.
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As always, we will closely monitor the situation and provide you with periodic updates.
We thank you for your understanding and continued support. Please do not hesitate to contact your customer service representative if you have any questions or concerns.
Thank You,
The CargoTrans / MariTrans / DFS Team
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