IMPORT/EXPORT
Daytime Rates Rising to Pick Up Cargo Containers at the Ports
If you want to pick up your cargo containers during the day at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, it will cost you a little more.
PierPass, which administers the extended-gates programs at the two ports, said it is raising the fee to collect cargo containers between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.
Starting on Aug. 8, the cost to pick up a 20-foot container will go from $69.17 to $70.49, which is a 1.9 percent increase. For a 40-foot container, the cost will rise from $138.34 to $140.98.
PierPass President John Cushing said the increased fees are to cover rising labor costs and to sustain continued operations of the PierPass OffPeak gates.
There is no fee to pick up cargo containers between 6 p.m. and 3 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays or during the day on Saturday.
Revenues from the fees serve two purposes: They help to compensate terminals for running five extra shifts each week, and the fees also encourage truckers and cargo interests to deliver and retrieve containers during off-peak hours, when traffic is lighter.
After cargo volumes mushroomed between 2000 and 2004, the West Coast Marine Terminal Operator Agreement in 2005 launched the PierPass program to cope with long lines of trucks waiting at 13 container terminals to collect cargo containers at the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach. Trucks were also flooding the highways during peak hours and causing more problems.
Since its inception, PierPass has pushed slightly more than 50 percent of truck traffic at the ports to off-peak hours and taken more than 35 million truck trips out of daytime traffic.
Last year, the Port of Los Angeles handled 8.2 million 20-foot cargo containers, down from its peak of 8.5 million containers in 2006. The Port of Long Beach last year saw 7.2 million cargo containers go through its gates, down from a peak of 7.3 million containers in 2007.
