Supply Chain Productivity: Oakland

The Port of Oakland is developing proposals to accelerate containerized trade flow through its five marine terminals. They include:

Saturday operations every week to alleviate weekday crowding inside terminals.
Locations outside terminals where cargo could be dropped off or picked up after hours.
Electronic monitoring to measure wait-times at terminal gates.
A "gray" chassis fleet which permits harbor truckers to use any chassis at any terminal to haul cargo over the road.

"Our customers don’t want to wait for their cargo when it comes off the ship," said Port Executive Director Chris Lytle. "We hear them and we understand their urgency, so we’re acting on it."

The port said that a cargo glut in recent weeks had resulted from vessels reaching Oakland off-schedule and in bunches after delays at congested Southern California ports. Harbor truckers report waiting two hours or more to pick up containers.

The port’s cargo acceleration program is intended to address slowdowns and long waits. Regular Saturday gates would spread cargo pickup and delivery over an extra day each week, relieving stress on terminal operations.

Offsite locations would enable truckers to transact business without entering terminals. Monitoring would provide drivers with up-to-the-minute wait times so they could avoid peak periods of activity. The gray chassis pool, it says, should minimize periodic shortages of chassis that delay cargo delivery.

Cargo acceleration is the latest in a series of steps the port has taken to improve customer service. Earlier this month, the port reported that it has cleared a backlog of ships awaiting berths. It also announced that vessel schedules are normalizing after two months of disruptions caused by a waterfront labor dispute.

Further evidence of improvement comes from March data, as detailed in the attachment, showing TEU throughput nearly double the February total and up 8.1 percent from March 2014.