ATA President Offers Suggestions for Ports
temporary suspension or liberalization of federal hours-of-service rules for truck drivers could help in the effort to clear away the backlog at West Coast Ports, the president of the American Trucking Associations suggested Friday.
In a letter to the head of the U.S. Maritime Administration, ATA President William Canary offered this and other recommendations aimed at safely and efficiently resolving the container traffic jams at the ports.
Canary also urged a “24/7 terminal operation” so trucks can operate during off-peak hours.
He also urged that port employees work at full productivity levels and that steamship lines should place orders for sufficient labor to assure maximum port capacity.
In addition to the well publicized economic consequences of the freight backlog, the current conditions clearly pose an unnecessary and dangerous national security condition, Canary said.
Harbors filled with cargo-laden containers constitute an extraordinarily target-rich opportunity for terrorists, Canary pointed out, noting that, once the freight resumes movement, the United States Customs Service likely will have reduced opportunity to conduct targeted inspections of containers.
He said ports should run “full gates” (a balance of in-gates and out-gates), otherwise ports will run out of chassis necessary to freight-system recovery. Sometimes, he said, a terminal operator (steamship line) will order only outgoing gates, or some other imbalance of in-and-out gates that are not proportional to the traffic waiting outside the gates. The right balance will provide for the return of chassis needed to haul containers inland and mitigate regional traffic congestion.
Particularly during the recovery period, Canary urged, consignees and retailers should be encouraged to do their part by receiving freight during off-hours. This will enable trucks to return to the ports. Without their cooperation, all other efforts would be mostly for naught.
