Gray chassis pool in Port of NY/NJ to start this fall

TRAC Intermodal CEO said inclusive talks will result in a better overall chassis service product.    A gray chassis pool planned for the Port of New York and New Jersey may not begin operations until this fall.
   While a task force working on the plans had originally targeted a July 1 startup, Keith Lovetro, chief executive officer of TRAC Intermodal, said Tuesday, “We had used July 1 as an aspirational date. At the time that was set we were still in the process of sizing the effort. And so I think it would be more prudent at this point to say we are targeting a late third to early fourth quarter start date.”
   Lovetro, whose firm is part of Council on Port Performance group working on the plans, said “a lot of the kind of temporary situations that were occurring in the New York/New Jersey market – we have taken great efforts to remedy them. So the chassis availability, the throughput, the ease of use has gone up. So the fact that the pool is running maybe late third quarter to early fourth quarter won’t necessarily be a negative impact.”
   A gray chassis pool started up at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in March.
   “When we built the pool of pools out on the West Coast, the three IEPs (intermodal equipment providers TRAC, Flexi-Van Leasing and Direct ChassisLink) put their heads together and came up with an operating plan and we implemented it,” said Lovetro. “That went pretty quick because there were three of us.”
   He said the council’s task force planning the gray pool in New York/New Jersey has about 15 different members, including representative from drayage companies, shippers, steamship lines, marine terminals, the New York Shipping Association.
   “It’s good because it gets all the constituents at the table and it’s very inclusive – the downside would be that it’s a little slower,” he explained. ”It will make a better product in the end but just a little slower process.”