inbound

Maritime logistics experts spend years studying the optimal way to pack thousands of steel containers onto quarter-mile-long containerships. Now, the French transportation and shipping company CMA CGM Group may have found a new source of expert labor for the job—pre-school aged children.

Marseilles-based CMA CGM has teamed up with the French wooden toy
manufacturer Vilac to produce a wooden educational toy they call “My first
container ship.”
Designed to teach children aged three and above how to stack shapes,
the kit includes a toy ship with a solid wooden hull emblazoned with the
shipping line’s six-letter logo. Kids can load about 30 red, blue, and yellow
container blocks onto wooden pegs on the deck of the 18-inch-long Jules
Verne, painted to match the familiar navy blue bulwarks and red hulls of
CMA CGM’s 470 other oceangoing cargo vessels.

Parents who want to raise a little shipping magnate can buy the toy in more than 12 countries, including France, the U.S., Italy, the U.K., and Indonesia by ordering through Vilac distributors’ shops or e-commerce websites like Amazon.com.

Regulators have not yet announced whether they will allow the 14-ounce (fully loaded) ships to traverse the Panama Canal.

The consultancy Armstrong & Associates Inc.’s “3PL Value Creation Summit 2015,” held the last week of October in Chicago, offered a solid lineup of speakers and a chance for attendees to gather in an informal setting, the recipe for an excellent educational conference. We learned, for example, that today one can actually buy a product from one retailer and exchange it for a similar product at another retailer, at no charge. This could add another layer of challenges to the reverse logistics segment.

We also learned, courtesy of Tom Sanderson, CEO of Transplace, a Dallas-based third-party logistics service provider (3PL) with a strong presence in Mexico, that Mexican truck drivers are just as qualified and professional as U.S. drivers, that good Mexican carriers have the same access to liability coverage as do U.S. carriers, and that the differences in the two legal systems don’t really faze Mexican companies. What keeps Mexican truckers out of U.S. commerce (beyond the 25-mile border commercial zones) is a ban on operating between U.S. points after delivering a load, Sanderson said. Because Mexican drivers must immediately return to their country from their U.S. dropoff point, there is little incentive to operate one-way unless there are loads available at or very near the dropoff location, Sanderson said.

Toy containership lets tots hone
stevedoring skills
3PLs praise Mexican trucking professionals

Los Angeles is famous for its movie stars, its container traffic, and its sunshine, and the city recently announced plans to combine two of those features to reduce pollution at its bustling port.

No, the Port of Los Angeles will not be putting matinee idols and ingénues to work as longshoremen. Rather, it will mount photovoltaic (PV) solar power systems at 12 locations on port property, such as rooftops, parking lots, and underutilized ground sites.

Together, the solar panels will generate an estimated 10 megawatts, representing about one-sixth of the port’s current power demand for running ship-to-shore cranes, ships at berth, and terminal equipment.

Operated by Hecate Energy Harborside under a 20-year deal, the PV panels could start pumping power to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s utility grid as soon as mid-2016.

The arrangement will help the port continue to improve air quality throughout Southern California and supports its goals under the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan. Port leaders first launched clean air initiatives 10 years ago when they switched many systems from diesel engines to electric power, which helped cut emissions of diesel particulate matter by 85 percent, sulfur oxides by 97 percent, and nitrogen oxides by 52 percent between 2005 and 2014.