Tag Archives: Chassis

Congested Port of LA receiving empty containers from Gulf, Southeast

Everyone has something to report about the great supply chain disaster. In this case, empty containers moving from the Southeast ports to LA/Long Beach are going to cause problems there. You can read to find out about the problems. There’s no space for them.

Even with new rules to allow stacks of containers to be 6 high instead of 2 high, the problems won’t go away. Just making the rule does not get the terminal operators to do it. And as the article points out, higher stacks mean it’s harder to find and get to a specific container for a given truck or ship. That adds time to the transfers, and creates another source of delay.

Perhaps finally people will grasp that in the age of global shipping there must be a plan, at least countrywide, to integrate all the components of the system– full containers, berths, empty containers, yards, stacking space, ports, terminals, warehouses, drayage trucking, chassis, appointments.

More than that, the plan has to be followed!!

There’s little that state governors can do, even though Gavin Newsom in California is trying to find ways to help out by relieving some of the storage space problems. When the commerce is interstate, and indeed international, it’s bigger than just one bottleneck point.

Lori Ann LaRocco Monday, October 25, 2021

Exclusive: Congested Port of LA receiving empty containers from Gulf, Southeast – FreightWaves

Eric Kulisch, Air Cargo Editor Monday, October 25, 2021

City of Long Beach allows logistics companies to stack containers higher – FreightWaves

Major forwarder on how to reduce the bottlenecks at Long Beach

Ryan Petersen, CEO of Flexport, hired a boat to visit the Port of LA/Long Beach to see the traffic jam of ships and observe what the terminals are doing. He came away with numerous suggestions, some of which have appeared in the directive published yesterday by Governor Gavin Newsom.

Ryan is a keen observer of the shipping scene, in addition to being CEO of a fast-growing forwarder.

The problems he detects seem to be yard space for containers, and a shortage of chassis and places to put empty containers to get them off chassis.

The new policy will allow stacking up to six high instead of only two high. That will help out both port yards and inland yards, such as for rail. More land available for stacking will also help, if properties close to rail yards can be identified and assigned for stacking.

Apparently, because empty containers cannot be dropped off, chassis are standing around with empty containers on them, preventing their use for a full container newly unloaded from a ship. A shortage of chassis ready to take a loaded container thus occurs.

How come it is always chassis and empties that cause the problems in the container supply chain?

By Alex Lennane 25/10/2021

Major forwarder on how to reduce the bottlenecks at Long Beach – The Loadstar

Truckers counter ocean carrier effort to dismiss chassis complaint

It goes on and on. Truckers at ports are constantly being rattled by individual contract specifications that are probable violations of law. Chassis, as usual, are one of the flash points. There’s always something new to write about when we look at chassis use around ports.

The article has a series of links to past stories in this chain of events, making it quite easy to follow. At play is a $1.8 billion lawsuit against OCEMA, the ocean carriers’ vehicle for providing chassis for their containers.

Because of US liability laws the ocean carriers didn’t want to own chassis in the US. They then found that in the US they could not force truckers to own chassis. there’s a nice game theoretic reason why that won’t work economically. So they (and others) had to create pools. But now they want to control the pool activities. You can’t have it both ways– be out of the business, and running it at the same time!

Chris GillisTuesday, October 6, 2020

Truckers counter ocean carrier effort to dismiss chassis complaint – FreightWaves