* British Columbia / Canada - Tackling truckers head on
-- Port Metro Vancouver knew it had to find a fix for its dysfunctional trucking sector... You could be forgiven for thinking that truckers rule the roost at many North American ports; their actions can quickly bring a port to its knees. Whether they are a disparate bunch that create problems of fragmentation or a unionised group that can strong arm their views, managing this group of port ‘workers’ can be a challenge... Canada’s Port Metro Vancouver is one port that has tackled the issue head on. It introduced a new licensing system at the start of the year to reduce the number of trucking companies and drivers. The previous glut led to long wait times and low rates, which translated into undercutting, creating further problems. In fact, the issue became so bad that truckers serving the port downed tools for nearly a month last year... Under the new system, the number of trucks licensed to work the port has dropped by nearly 30% and the benefits are already being felt... President and chief executive Robin Silvester tells Port Strategy that the improvement has been “substantial”...
... A range of issues combined to make this a particularly tricky one to solve: the port had an oversupply of trucks chasing a finite, albeit growing, amount of business; it had a number of trucking companies that were not behaving the way they should have with regards to their contractors and employees; and it had some challenges in terminal performance meaning that truck drivers being paid on a per trip basis were getting delayed on occasion in terminals, which reduced their earning capacity... “What we succeeded in doing with the support of the federal and provincial government was to reduce the size of the trucking fleet through the introduction of a new licensing system for trucks accessing the port and a restriction on the number of licences. We also built in to that a number of stringent requirements on the companies that were granted the licenses to ensure that they were very clearly motivated to behave properly towards their employees and contractors"... Taking that monitoring a stage further, the Port is now focussed on establishing a port-wide common reservation system that will further increase efficiency as it will allow users to match a drop off with a pick-up to create a double-ended move...
(Photos: Port Metro Vancouver aerials view) -- Vancouver, B.C., CAN - Port Styrategy, by Carly Fields - 27 April 2015
* US ports move toward truck appointment model
-- Rich Ceci starts work at 4:30 a.m., but others arrive even earlier. In recent weeks, truck drivers have lined up before midnight outside the GCT Bayonne container terminal in New Jersey. Some mornings, the queue has stretched for miles... When gates open at 6 a.m., the traffic jam moves into the terminal. Hundreds of trucks fill driveways at container stacks. Longshoremen must maneuver equipment between tight-packed vehicles. Productivity slows and tempers flare. By mid-morning, drayage drivers who’d hoped for a profitable day are waiting, fuming and posting photos on Facebook... “It’s crazy. It doesn’t have to be this way,” said Ceci, the Bayonne terminal’s vice president of information technology... Ceci believes the solution is trucker appointments that allow terminals to calibrate the flow of trucks into their gates and through their facilities, and to match truck demand with capacity at entrance gate and in each area of the terminal... GCT Bayonne plans to introduce such a system this year, and other New York-New Jersey terminals are quietly preparing to follow. The Port of Virginia plans in June to begin testing an appointment system at Norfolk International Terminals and eventually expand it portwide. The NIT appointment system had a short-lived test last year... Appointments remain the exception at container terminals, but the concept is gaining support. Various forms of appointment systems already exist at ports including Los Angeles; Long Beach; New Orleans; Vancouver, British Columbia; Sydney, Australia, and Southampton, U.K. ... Advent Intermodal Solutions’ eModal technology supports management of trucker appointments at several ports and will be used at New York-New Jersey and Virginia. All New York-New Jersey terminals have agreed feed container availability data to their port’s system... Though truckers remain doubtful, both ports are moving toward appointments. With trade volume growing and the raised Bayonne Bridge and expanded Panama Canal expected to bring even larger ships...
Ports of New York and New Jersey, NY/NY, USA - J.O.C., by Joseph Bonney - Apr 27, 2015Labels: trucks loading systems
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