Market Matters Blog

Longshoremen Chassis Inspections Continue to Slow Trucks at Ports

Mary Kennedy
By  Mary Kennedy , DTN Basis Analyst
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Flatbed truck loading containers of soybeans. (Photo courtesy of SB&B Foods Inc., Casselton, N.D.)

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (DTN) -- West Coast ports lost ground to East Coast and Gulf Coast ports, with their share of imports falling to 45% in May versus 51.5% one year ago, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released July 7, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Labor negotiations between the International Longshoremen and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) resulted in delays in shipping for nearly nine months, causing many shipping companies to move their business to other ports.

The Port of Portland suffered a blow when Hanjiin shipping company, which accounted for 78% of the business at Terminal 6, pulled their business on March 9. In April, Hapag-Lloyd shipping company stopped doing business there as well due to the ongoing shipping delays into and out of the port. The loss of these companies created headaches and higher costs for shippers who had to move some business to other PNW Ports such as Seattle or Tacoma.

Mike Hajny, vice president of Wesco International, Inc., a hay exporter in Ellensburg, Washington, told DTN via email, "While service at Seattle/Tacoma ports has improved tremendously, many terminals are still only giving us a three- to four-day window before sailing to return containers. It's tight to make that work, but operationally the trucks are in and out quickly. Some terminals are offering hoot gates." Hoot gates allow trucks to enter and leave the terminal at off-peak hours and the "hoot shift," is so named because it shares its hours with the owls, from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m.

Hajny added: "We have been returning some cargo to the rail in Portland and trucking some to Tacoma. Portland Rail has been no cost change, but Tacoma trucking is obviously costing us more.

"Most customers overseas have an oversupply of product, due the flood of product that arrived after the port slowdown. That has caused new-crop sales to be at an absolute standstill, taking some pressure off the movement of containers into terminals for now," Hajny said.

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ILWU CHASSIS INSPECTIONS STILL CREATING HEADACHES FOR TRUCKERS

When the ILWU and PMA came to a contract agreement in February, the PMA gave the ILWU workers jurisdiction over the maintenance and repair of truck chassis. While this agreement does not allow the ILWU to inspect trucker-owned chassis, the process is creating a slowdown in trucks' ability to enter the port. All trucks are pulled over because there is no way to immediately tell if they are privately owned.

Curtis Whalen, executive director of the American Trucking Association's (ATA) intermodal conference, told DTN via phone in June, "The whole process is illegal and the ILWU has no legal right to stop the truckers."

Whalen pointed out "the intermodal equipment provider (IEP) is responsible for road-ability, and under law, inspections are done long before the trucks arrive at the ports." Shipping lines no longer own the chassis after selling most of them to IEPs, mainly to save themselves money. Whalen said this means the PMA, which represents the shipping lines, has no authority over the chassis inspection. Whalen said the "union and PMA had no right to negotiate over something they do not own."

In a June 1 article, DTN reported that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has rules and regulations governing ocean carriers, railroads, chassis pool operators and other IEPs. These rules, issued in December 2008, affect the chassis, which are special trailers that hold cargo containers when they are transferred from ship or rail to truck for final delivery. The new regulations made IEPs subject to the FMCSA rules for the first time, and establish shared safety responsibility among IEPs, motor carriers, and drivers.

"We want to ensure that every piece of equipment traveling on our highways is operating safely," FMCSA Administrator John H. Hill stated in a Dec. 17, 2008, press release. Here is a link to the press release and new regulations: http://goo.gl/…

Whalen told DTN that he notified the FMCSA in Washington, D.C., over one month ago about what is happening on the West Coast. On July 11, Whalen told DTN in an email that nothing has changed and that there are still long wait lines due to ILWU labor "interfering with chassis."

"We are waiting for a Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) report on congestion that was supposed to be released last week, but still has not been posted."

The FMC is the independent federal agency responsible for regulating the U.S. international ocean transportation system for the benefit of U.S. exporters, importers and the U.S. consumer.

Whalen said if the ILWU continues to pull trucks over, truckers may refuse to haul to the ports, causing a loss of truck drivers in an industry that continues to experience driver shortages.

Mary Kennedy can be reached at mary.kennedy@dtn.com

Follow Mary Kennedy on Twitter @MaryCKenn

(AG/BAS)

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Dale Paisley
7/14/2015 | 1:00 PM CDT
I just wonder when the unions are going to realize that it does not help to shoot themselves in the foot all the time. I saw this all the time when I was union. People complaining about everythig and sitting around doing nothing about it. I can remember a time when men took pride in their work, not in how long it took to do a 5 minute job.