Why California ports are overwhelmed: Intermodal perspective from out East

Overdrive Radio

Consider today's Overdrive Radio edition in the context of Overdrive Executive Editor Alex Lockie’s reporting on the intermodal niche released a week and a half back, and the system-wide backlogs being experienced all around the container-moving supply chains, particularly evident at the nation’s West Coast ports. The feature was another entry in our "Niche Hauls" series of features on freight segments where owner-ops are in high demand: https://www.overdriveonline.com/business/article/15279445/intermodal-haulers-fight-off-a-system-collapse-at-ports What we didn’t get in that three-part report was a perspective from among the top volume ports on the East Coast – for that, Overdrive Editor Todd Dills reached back to small fleet owner-operator George Berry, working out of the Port of Virginia principally. He’s a uniquely qualified source to voice owner-operators’ views on just where congestion issues at the ports originate. For years now he’s been a voice in a group called “For Truckers By Truckers” on social media around port and other intermodal drivers’ issues, and his small fleet leases with five owner-operators now out of Virginia. For Truckers By Truckers continues today as principally an intermodal informational source for drivers and owner-operators of all types: https://www.facebook.com/ForTruckersbyTruckers Since the President of the United States raised port issues as a national concern almost two weeks ago, there’s been no small amount of finger-pointing to just who’s to blame among supply chain parties. Yet as George Berry tells it, the backlog issue is multifaceted, stressed by mismanaged sorting, pressure on intermodal haulers to pickup on the "last free day," a generalized, widespread shortage of chassis as they're tied up by various parties, and much, much more. Undue detention issues arise then at the warehouse receiving end more often than not if the hauler’s lucky enough to get an open chassis. Yet among it all, there's good news for that common problem even in intermodal work, where "free" detention time is dwindling at receivers, and commonly low intermodal owner-operator revenue levels annually are rising. Berry estimates the current high-demand/relatively-shorter-supply situation could yield as much as a $50K revenue boost annually (or around 50%) for such operators. Berry describes himself as a "California kid," and while his intermodal career has been centered in Virginia since early this century, he feels California's emissions regs and other restrictions have exacerbated ports' overload out West. That traces straight back to the California Air Resources Board’s Drayage and wider Truck & Bus rule restricting port operators and then the wider trucking community to running only newer-model-year vehicles. Those restrictions were put in place on pre-2007-emissions-spec engines serving the ports well before trucks running in the rest of the state, furthermore. "They’ve kind of created this conundrum, in my opinion, on their own," he says in this podcast. "And when they say, 'You make it, you’re going to sit in it and stew," and that's basically what’s going to happen with Los Angeles/Long Beach."