Intermodal Summit: Managing chassis pools in a chaotic market

His career includes more than two decades in public affairs, transportation and supply chain-related leadership positions at the U.S. Department of Transportation and CSX Corp. (NASDAQ: CSX). O’Malley most recently served as president of the Railway Supply Institute (RSI), a trade association representing more than 200 manufacturers and service providers to the nation’s railroads.

KEY QUOTES FROM O’MALLEY:

On equipment dwell times: “Let’s take Memphis for example. We had a little over 2,000 chassis on the street pre-COVID. We’ve now got close to 5,000. We also are dealing with customers holding on to them for eight days instead of four. What happens, it effectively cuts your fleet in half.”

On anti-dumping legal actions and the impact on chassis manufacturing: “China used to be the largest source for chassis and that essentially has been shut down by this dumping case. The U.S. manufacturers have started to ramp up, but they really didn’t do that until the springtime when the case was nearing its completion. So, you have a pretty long period of time where there wasn’t much production going on, when demand was kind of going through the roof.”

On side underride guard mandates: “It’s really targeted toward your 18-wheeler. But if it was mandated on chassis, you could no longer stack them and that would mean you couldn’t stack them in marine terminals, which tend to be pretty high value from a real estate perspective. And you also couldn’t stack them to move them between different locations. That would create a real problem for us. We’ve been trying to make sure that people in Congress and in the administration understand the potential downside.”

Click for more FreightWaves articles by Todd Maiden.

• C.H. Robinson announces drayage congestion surcharges
• Discount duress: Dollar Tree says high freight costs will dent earnings
• Peak season: Let the chaos commence