Long Beach enters 'crisis mode' to attack congestion

As congestion mounts in Southern California, the Port of Long Beach is taking immediate

actions to target hot spots in the harbor area and to share information on chassis

availability with all port stakeholders.

“We’re in a crisis mode right now,” Executive Director Jon Slangerup said in an interview

Tuesday.

The neighboring ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles have struggled much of the year

with chassis dislocations, rail service delays, unusually long truck turn times and

container terminals that are pushing their storage capacities to the brink. However, rather

than seeing the congestion dissipate, it continues to get worse.

The ports have applied to the Federal Maritime Commission for permission to discuss

these problems and develop joint solutions, but until that permission is granted, they must

operate on parallel tracks.

“ Like trucking and terminal operator executives, Slangerup said a convergence of factors has contributed to the port’s worst congestion

problems in years, but the main culprit is the chaos that has resulted since shipping lines in Southern California stopped providing

chassis to their customers earlier this year. “The root cause is chassis,” he said.

The port last week established a Chassis Relief Team that held its first meeting with Direct ChassisLink, cargo interests, terminal

operators and truckers. DCLI, one of the three major chassis leasing companies in the harbor, agreed to take the lead in working with

the other providers to publish regular updates on chassis positioning throughout the port complex.

Bill Shea (DCLI president and CEO) has been very visible in his attempts to bring the three parties together,” Slangerup said.

The Port of Long Beach will publish regular bulletins that deal with congestion and chassis issues, and, despite its landlord status,

will do what it can to keep all of the private-sector companies working together to relieve the congestion. “The Port of Long Beach

rule is we may not be an operator, but we can be a facilitator,” Slangerup said.

Each sector of the transportation industry is suffering from and contributing to the congestion problem.

“We’re three to five days behind on rail,” Slangerup said. Truck turn times of two hours or longer at marine terminals, which had

been accounting for about 12 percent of all truck moves in the port complex, are now double that number. Cargo interests report

waits of five to 10 days until their containers are ready for pickup.

“This is an extraordinarily bad situation,” Slangerup said.

Long Beach and the chassis leasing companies are working on short, medium and long-term action plans, he said. The short-term

equipment tracking and reporting measures are designed to provide a measure of relief in the coming weeks. “The Chassis Relief

Team is on this daily, throughout the day,” he said.

The mid-term solution, which DCLI, Flexi-Van and TRAC Intermodal will implement in the next 30 to 90 days, will be to develop an

asset-sharing system so there is enough equipment available each day to take care of all of the needs of truckers and cargo

interests in the harbor. “It looks very promising,” Slangerup said.

In the long term, the goal is to implement a neutral, or gray chassis concept in which a “pool of pools” will most likely be formed

that provides inter-operability of chassis throughout the port complex. As the private sector works toward that goal, it will seek

guidance from a port stakeholders’ group that Los Angeles and Long Beach formed two years ago to develop a permanent

chassis solution for the harbor, he said.

As for now, Long Beach will respond day-to-day as hot spots are uncovered, Slangerup said. There is no discernible trend yet, nor

is there any one terminal in the harbor that stands out as an egregious problem area. Chassis shortages and congestion issues

roll through the harbor as large vessels dock, containers are discharged and trucks arrive to pick up the containers, he said.