New app to enable street turns at Port of Oakland

A drayage driver has developed a mobile phone application designed to allow truckers to swap empty cargo containers in the field instead of at marine terminals.    A drayage driver has developed a mobile phone app to enable empty container exchanges outside the Port of Oakland to help minimize wasted trips and traffic inside marine terminals, the port authority said Monday.
   Filex Fok, a licensed motor carrier serving the port, introduced the Jupigo container-matching app last week. Drivers with empty containers to return post their equipment availability on Jupigo and truckers searching for empties to deliver to customers seeking to load them with exports post their requirements as well. The app automatically alerts both drivers, who can then initiate a container exchange.
   Conducting street turns reduces the need for truckers to make trips back to the port with containers emptied of import contents and then separately drive to pick up an empty and take it to warehouse for an export load. Benefits include reduced transportation costs, less fuel consumption and diesel emissions, less crowding at marine terminals, and more revenue for drivers.
   Oakland truckers have used e-mail or online chats to arrange street-turns in the past on an ad hoc basis. Jupigo is expected to be more efficient because of its automatic matching feature. Truckers, however, must still contact the shipping lines that control the empty containers to get permission for the transaction.
   The app is the third introduced at the Port of Oakland this month to shorten lines at terminal gates. The others, called DrayQ and DrayLink, gives drivers real time metrics on gate queues and terminal transaction times. They were developed for the Oakland port authority by Reston, Va.-based tech firm Leidos.
   Jupigo estimates there are 2,000 to 3,000 street turns conducted by Port of Oakland drivers on a weekly basis. The company hopes to more than double the number with its new app. For every street-turn it enables, two more trucks are kept out of line at Oakland terminals.
   Jupigo should be available in app stores next month, according to Fok. There’ll be no charge for the feature.
   “The payoff is increased efficiency for all of us who drive at the Port of Oakland,” Fok said.