Continuing to wrestle with the age old problem of getting cargo off the docks by truck
 Long a problem in ports worldwide, there are now lessons to be learnt in Europe from efforts to alleviate trucks that clog the gates of the 13 marine container terminals in southern California's San Pedro Bay harbour complex.
At issue today is the transparency of finances of LA-Long Beach's jointly managed PierPass Inc, which was formed 10 years ago to manage the problem but is still little closer to doing so.
In the latest attempt it help, a workshop last December attended by 70 major shippers, or beneficial cargo owners (BCO), truckers and other stakeholders addressed what options they could think of.
Many agreed that financial transparency problems arose from the complexities of running night gate service. If all went well, truckers benefit from daytime gate service, which is congested because of its universal popularity.
PierPass Inc, the 10-year-old LA-Long Beach port nonprofit set up to handle trucks, charges a traffic mitigation fee (TPF) on daytime traffic, with the revenues going to compensate terminals for operating night and weekend gates.
This amounts to a financial incentive to move cargo during less-congested times. The TMF is charged for non-exempt containers moving during peak hours (Monday through Friday, 3am to 6pm).
Truckers and BCOs say they would like night gates more if they were efficient, but they aren't. That's because members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, who regularly earn US$114,000 a year are too expensive to stay idle because trucks don't show up.
When there are too few trucks one night, the terminal operator, who must pay for a full shift if a docker is sent home for lack of work, tends to redeploy him on ships or freight trains, leaving late arriving truckers with even slower service or none.
Weston LaBar, the executive director of the Harbour Trucking Association, said in and IHS Media report that his group's unhappiness hinges on an ongoing disagreement - terminal operators say misunderstanding - as to how longshore labour is deployed.
At the Pierpass workshop, two major plans were discussed, though delegates were disappointed that gate efficiency and transparency in the collection and disbursement of TMF revenue were not fully addressed.
Mr LaBar said the problem was one of transparency. The 13 terminals in LA-Long Beach complex determine how much it costs to operate five extended gates each week. PierPass calculates how much money is generated by the TMF, and publishes that information on its website.
But truckers and BCOs suspect that terminals calculate a higher percentage of labour and equipment costs being deployed to servicing trucks, as opposed to vessel and rail operations, than is actually the case.
"It's a lack of transparency," Mr LaBar said, adding that has also been the focus of Federal Maritime Commission inquiries into PierPass operations. A transparent accounting of what percentage of the TMF funds are used specifically to process trucks would generate greater confidence in PierPass and extended gates, he said. "That's the spirit of the programme," Mr LaBar said.
PierPass is said to have shut their night gates early and send the workers home, or redeployed labour to vessel or rail operations. To this, terminal operators say they devote as many resources as are needed to process truckers into and out of their facilities.
"There is so much work that needs to be done," said Ed DeNike, chief operating officer at SSA Marine. Since longshoremen are paid to work the entire shift, it would be foolish not to redeploy labour elsewhere in the terminal where it is needed, he said. "SSA will not send anyone home early," he said.
PierPass president John Cushing said the advisory committee will consider two options to improve the extended-gates regime.
First, they will look at shifting from a fee charged only on daytime container moves to a lower, flat fee charged on all laden container moves both day and night, and a port-wide peel-off scheme in which truckers would arrive at the terminals and take delivery of the first container that is available rather than waiting in line for a specific box to surface.
"The night gate in its current form is very dysfunctional," said BCO representative Steve Hughes, vice president supplier development, government affairs and logistics at Centric Parts, which imports parts for the automobile industry.
Mr Hughes cited several BCO complaints, including a charge that terminals shut their gates early if truck traffic is light, "moving crews to ship-to-shore operations", truck bunching outside the gates before the 6pm shift begins, and congestion within the terminals due to poorer service at night. "In our case, after having used the night gate exclusively for eight-plus years, we've been forced to move all of our cargo during the day and pay a traffic mitigation fee for a service we can no longer use to our advantage," he said.
Truckers and terminal operators say widespread implementation of portwide trucker appointment systems, a plan that is well underway and should be completed in 2017, could go a long way toward helping terminals plan their labour and equipment needs at the gates each day while ensuring truckers that when they show up for a night reservation they will be efficiently processed.
But not all agree, Truck appointment systems have proven to be difficult to implement. To many, the problem appears to be with the poor sharing of shipment information among members of the supply chain.
Said HTA chairman George Boyle: "Yes, appointment systems can help, but in LA-Long Beach, there is no current or imminent integration between systems that will allow for delays and problems at one terminal affecting another. The systems do not talk to each other.
Moreover, chassis shortages and dislocations at marine terminals continue to be a problem as before. Neither terminals nor truckers have control over, and thus cannot run a smooth appointment system without it becoming chaotic for many individual truckers. If the drivers show up on time at the terminal and are quickly processed, but chassis are not available, they wait for hours until one shows up.
Said another HTA executive Fred Johring: "We have suggested the appointment systems be paired with a 'lodging' of empty containers to be terminated. The lodging of the empty would verify the empty could be returned to that terminal...that would give the terminal a way to predict chassis availability."
While agreeing chassis availability is a problem, terminal operators insist truckers must keep to appointment windows, and certainly by avoiding the dreaded "no show" that plagues the terminals. One terminal operator that closely tracks trucker appointments calculated that on one day in December, 23.5 per cent of the more than 1,000 calls involved no-shows by truckers and 10 per cent were late calls. The incidence of missed calls was greatest in the late night and early morning hours.
One can see from the above examination of the problem of getting cargo off the docks by truck, there is some distance to go before the issue is resolved. Despite years of work trying to do so the solution seems as elusive as ever. |
