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SEE US AT BOOTH 3923
to illustrate the bottlenecks at Chicago, it
can take a train more time to get from one
end of the city to the other than it takes to
run from Los Angeles to Chicago.
Megavessels entering the trans-Pacif-ic trades threaten to overwhelm West
Coast port infrastructures, while the creation of vessel-sharing agreements like
the 2M alliance between Maersk Line and
Mediterranean Shipping Co., which was
set to begin in January, could alter freight
flows because goods arriving at ports
on one vessel will often head for different terminals. This has led to significant
congestion and has left the “on-dock
rail” model, where railcars must be
filled before a train leaves the port area,
increasingly prone to delays. The pitched
contract battle between coastwide waterfront labor and management, which was
still raging at this writing and which has
slowed the loading and offloading of vessels since the fall, was a stark reminder of
the ongoing risks in an interconnected
system.
The cost and availability of drayage services that truck containers between ports,
intermodal ramps, and shipping docks
remains a significant problem. Port congestion and rail reliability played havoc
with dray schedules, forcing drivers to
wait longer than normal for loads and
cutting into their productivity. Dray has
not been immune to the impact of a
shortage of commercial drivers. Drayage
costs, which for a long-distance round-trip could run over $1,000, can neutralize
the benefits of the relatively inexpensive
train portion of the overall movement.
Reducing dray miles would require the
construction of smaller terminals closer
to the customer; BNSF said it has terminals within 200 miles of 98 percent of the
U.S. importer population.
The silver lining, according to Clair,
is that sophisticated and deep-pocketed
truckers are entering the space with experienced drivers and cleaner, more fuel-efficient rigs. Their presence should raise
the quality and consistency of drayage
services, albeit at higher prices than users
are accustomed to paying, he said.
Meanwhile, intermodal demand will
continue to rise, creating opportunities
for the carriers as well as potential head-
aches in managing growth through
the ongoing turbulence. On that
score, the industry has been a victim
of its own success. Railroads have
effectively marketed intermodal as a
lower-cost, fuel-efficient, and envi-
ronmentally friendly alternative to
over-the-road truck. In the domes-
tic market, railroads are aggressively
competing with trucks on short-
haul movements, hoping to convert
millions of road shipments to inter-
modal. Internationally, U.S. imports
will keep on coming, maintaining
pressure on the intermodal infra-
structure to accommodate the flow.
