Peak Season at the Ports Has Not Peaked
What a difference a year makes.
Last August, there was a stack of ships waiting for space to dock at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
This August, hardly any vessels are waiting for a berth, even though this is traditionally the start of the peak shipping season for Fall and Holiday goods.
“Everything is moving swimmingly well,” said an amazed Manny Aschemeyer, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, which acts as the traffic manager for ships coming in and out of the port complex. “There are no backups. It has been a remarkable turnaround from what we had last year.”
In late August last year, there were nearly 70 ships at the two ports or anchored offshore. At the worst point, container ships took eight to nine days to get unloaded instead of the typical two to three days.
This year, there are nearly 50 vessels in port, which is normal. On an average day, only about four ships are waiting for a berth.
Spreading out
The drastic drop in traffic has a number of causes.
After seeing last year’s congestion problems go from bad to worse, several large companies decided to route their container traffic through other West Coast ports.
The Port of Oakland, which handles 99 percent of the waterborne commerce in Northern California, has seen its total cargo container traffic increase 15 percent during the first seven months of this year, compared with last year.
Also, seven ships sailing from Asia now make Oakland their first port of call, compared with four ships three years ago.
Cargo traffic has also been quite brisk in the Northwest, where the ports of Seattle and Tacoma, Wash., have been busy.
In Seattle, cargo container traffic was up nearly 28 percent during the first half of 2005, compared with the same period last year.
“We are seeing huge increases in freight going through Seattle and Tacoma,” said Dan Gatchet, president of West Coast Trucking, a major trucking company in Seattle that has about 80 truckers picking up cargo. “Our business is up 5 to 10 percent, but it could easily be up 30 to 40 percent if we could find more truckers to hire.”
He noted that several large companies— including Pier 1 Inc., Home Depot, Target Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.—have built huge distribution centers in the area to take advantage of the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad lines that connect the region to Chicago.
Better prepared
At the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nagging infrastructure and operational problems that contributed to last year’s congestion have improved.
There are more dockworkers. The railroads, after seeing hundreds of employees take early retirement last year, are re-staffing. They are also laying more track on heavily traveled routes, including the Sunset Route between Los Angeles and El Paso, Texas, and adding more cars.
Even though other West Coast ports are taking some business away from Southern California, cargo traffic at the Port of Long Beach climbed 21 percent during the first seven months of this year. Los Angeles’ cargo traffic dipped 1.8 percent during the same time period.
Helping these ports run more efficiently this year is the OffPeak program, which keeps the ports’ terminal gates open four nights a week and on Saturdays. It was launched on July 23. While it got off to a rocky start, the new program, operated by the not-for-profit PierPass Inc., is seeing more truckers operating at night.
“Most recently, we had 9,500 trucks a night, which is a good volume,” said Bruce Wargo, PierPass’ president and chief executive. He noted that about 30 percent to 33 percent of the cargo at the ports is now picked up during off-peak hours, which run from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. on Mondays through Thursdays and from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays.
Yet, turnaround times at the terminals are still an issue. While some truckers can get in and out of terminals quickly—such as those at the Maersk Inc., APL and Hanjin Shipping terminals–– others are waiting one hour to 90 minutes to pick up a load.
“We are still not seeing any of the truck drivers really overtly embracing this,” said Dick Coyle, president of Devine Intermodal, which employs 100 independent truckers to pick up cargo at the ports. Devine is paying drivers a $40 percontainer nighttime differential to pick up loads. Other companies, such as St. George Trucking and California Multimodal Inc. in Los Angeles, are also paying nighttime differentials to retain their truck drivers.
Wargo said he is working on improving the turnaround time at the terminals, as well as on billing problems.
“It’s like a juggernaut,” he explained. “It keeps lumbering on.”
