During a wide-ranging panel discussion at the 2017 IANA Intermodal Expo in Long Beach, Calif. on Sept. 19, a handful of industry insiders suggested instituting an appointment system and a flat fee at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
With the face of the maritime shipping industry evolving due to the reshuffling of alliances, continued ocean carrier consolidation and changing terminal ownership, one of the big questions in the industry, particularly at the adjoining port of Long Beach and Los Angeles, is how is vessel routing affecting the intermodal supply chain.
At the 2017 IANA Intermodal Expo in Long Beach, Calif. on Sept. 19, a handful of industry insiders addressed the issue during a wide-ranging panel discussion.
Steve Hughes, president and CEO of trucking company HCS said the ports need to revamp PierPass, the non-profit created by LA/LB terminal operators which administers a traffic mitigation fee to firms moving cargo in and out of the ports during the dayshift peak period of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays.
“There’s one thing to fix, and that’s [cargo] velocity,” Hughes said. “PierPass did a great job in its original intent, but it absolutely needs to be updated and I think a flat fee and an appointment system is the correct path, because we’ve gotta get velocity.”
Also among the issues discussed was terminal productivity, particularly as relates to longshore labor.
“Getting rid of the break between first and second shift and having full operations running during lunch and dinner so that the flow of traffic is from 8 (am) to 3 (am) nonstop, that would probably be the easiest.” Peter Schneider, vice president of trucking company TGS Transportation suggested.
“People are paying for these gates and we have to keep them open,” Sal Ferrigno, vice president of SSA Terminals said.
Ferrigno, responding to rumors of some terminals closing at 10 p.m., said he’s never seen any evidence of such.
“I can’t believe that any terminal would close at 10 o’clock at night when you’re hiring the labor. If you’re paying them for eight hours, you don’t let ‘em go home at 10o’clock,” he said. “We’ve heard this before, but anytime we ask ‘give us the name of a terminal,’ no one gives the name of a terminal, so what can we do?”
“Believe me, if there’s one terminal that that’s doing that, there’s 12 guys that will scream at him, because they’re basically ruining what we’re trying to do here,” he said.
Another issue discussed was cargo volumes and how they stack up with the peak period of 2006 and 2007, right as new environmental initiatives were being implemented, but before the Great Recession.
“You look at our volume growth and we’re reporting all these record volumes this year, but we’re about this much higher than in 2007,” Ferrigno said while holding his fingers centimeters apart.” And we were doing this work during the day. We were doing this volume during the day (in 2007). But we had to do something because of traffic.”
Ferrigno also said that the consequences of the new shipping alliances haven’t all been negative for terminals.
“It’s actually easier – that big ship is staying there for four days versus two ships working at the same time for two days. And now we have the alliances where some terminals Pier J used to have eight customers, now we have four – it makes it a lot easier for the terminal and operations,” he explained. “So there’s positive things, too.”
LA, Long Beach stakeholders push for PierPass update
