NY-NJ chassis providers to develop gray pool

Chassis providers and their customers have agreed to implement a shared-equipment model to improve productivity at marine terminals.    An industry working group under the aegis of the Port Authority of New York-New Jersey agreed Wednesday to establish a type of “gray” pool for chassis to help alleviate congestion in container yards.
   John Nardi, president of the New York Shipping Association and the working group’s chairman, said chassis providers will form a market pool allowing for the interchangeable exchange of chassis by truckers regardless of which company they lease from. 
   TRAC Intermodal, Flexi-Van and Direct ChassisLink are the major providers, although a couple of ocean carriers also still operate fleets in the area.
   In the next few weeks, the stakeholders will issue a request for proposal for a third-party company to manage the pool.
   Under the pool concept, each party can lease as many chassis as it contributes. Motor carriers, however, don’t have to worry about picking up and returning the wheeled frames to different terminals for each customer and instead can handle the equipment transaction at a single depot.
   Nardi said he expected the “gray” pool to be implemented early in the second quarter of 2015. 
   There were about 38,000 chassis in the New York-New Jersey port district as of this summer, according to the port authority’s Port Performance Task Force, although chassis companies have added some equipment since then.
   Achieving an interoperable chassis fleet was the top recommendation of the Port Performance Task Force last summer.
   Improving chassis maintenance to get more of the existing fleet in working order is another priority of shippers and truckers.