The chassis shortage spurs action by Long Beach to keep cargo fluid.
Congestion that has gripped container yards at Southern California marine terminals for more than a year is now receiving urgent attention by the Port of Long Beach. On Monday, the port’s Board of Harbor Commissioners unanimously voted to approve Chief Executive Jon Slangerup’s plan to develop a stand-by fleet of chassis that can be introduced to the market during peak periods.
Port officials say that poor chassis availability is one of the primary causes behind long truck queues and delays receiving or delivering containers at the yards. Truck delays at the ports result in cargo owners receiving late shipments at their warehouses. The ability of shuttle drivers to find roadworthy chassis near the port and terminals’ ability to service them when they arrive have been strained by the recent advent of much larger container vessels that drop thousands of metal shipping boxes in one concentrated period. Demand for chassis is high now because retailers have heavy orders of import containers to stock up for the holiday shopping season.
Last week, Port of Long Beach officials convinced two major chassis leasing companies, Direct Chassis Link Inc. and TRAC Intermodal, to add more than 3,000 chassis to the local fleet in the next couple months to provide short-term congestion relief.
It also created a Congestion Relief Team that meets daily to monitor terminal performance and collaborate with industry stakeholders on potential solutions.
Harbor Commissioners directed port authority staff to work up a proposal for purchasing, maintaining and managing thousands of truck chassis that will be kept in a pool to supplement equipment offered by the private market during times of shortage.
There are more than 100,000 chassis in circulation in the Los Angeles/Long Beach area. The problem isn’t merely the quantity of chassis, but the mismatch between where they are located and where they are needed. Some privately operated terminals have an adequate supply of chassis, while others are short. Chassis imbalances can be traced back to decisions by steamship lines in recent years to stop providing equipment themselves. Third-party operators have taken up much of the slack, but optimal pool locations, maintenance procedures and billing between parties in the supply chain have yet to be ironed out in the market.
“This current peak congestion crisis is something that was avoidable, and we are taking the necessary steps to prevent any such problems from happening again,” Slangerup said in a statement.
Slangerup is a former chief executive officer of FedEx Canada who was hired at the end of June to lead the Port of Long Beach. The port had been without a permanent chief since Christopher Lytle departed in the summer of 2013 to take the top spot at the Port of Oakland.
Fred Johring, the president of Golden State Express and chairman of the Harbor Trucking Association, said not enough details are available yet to directly comment on Long Beach’s chassis pool plan.
“Of course, we’re excited that the port is being involved and being assertive in attempting to solve an issue that historically they would not have reacted to” as a landlord port. “I think the new directors at both ports will be more proactive to make their ports be more attractive to customers, and this is a great indication of it,” he said.
The Port of Los Angeles in June hired former APL shipping executive Gene Seroka as its new director.
In September, DCLI and Flexi-Van announced plans to establish a gray chassis pool by Jan. 1 that would make chassis inter-operable within existing equipment pools supplied by multiple leasing companies. Arrangements are also being made for various pools to easily interchange equipment, so it doesn’t have to be picked and returned by truckers at the same point. Truckers complain they waste a lot of time each day retrieving and returning chassis to a particular terminal or provider. The goal is to establish common pick up and drop off locations.
Port of Long Beach to acquire emergency chassis fleet
