Robert Curry, president of Long Beach-based California Cartage Company (better known as Cal Cartage) says drayage rates in Southern California ports could rise 50% - or more. Against the backdrop of the dragging West Coast negotiations between ILWU ((International Longshore and Warehouse Union) waterfront labor and the management group PMA (The Pacific Maritime Association), truckers are fighting to stay afloat with poor turn times and low rates. The president of a leading Southern California harbor trucking company says, “I think you can expect to see harbor trucking rates go up as high as 100% and at least as much as 50% from current levels” due to congestion at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Robert Curry, president of California Cartage Company (Cal Cartage) based in Long Beach, California told AJOT that the rise in harbor trucking costs is happening because “the owner-operators simply cannot make a living based on the current level of turn times picking up and delivering containers. The congestion problem has made the older rates uneconomical and the truckers can no longer make a living.” Freight forwarders say increases are already in effect. A Northern California freight forwarder told AJOT that his harbor trucking rates from the Port of Oakland have risen by 50% and a Southern California freight forwarder reports that a $300 trucking rate from the Port of Long Beach has now increased to $450, a 50% hike. Curry says Cal Cartage processes 50,000 forty-foot unit containers per year, “We take a container and move the contents from 40-foot containers to 53 foot containers. The effect is that for every three 40-foot containers, we transload the contents into two 53-foot containers. The result is that we are reducing the number of truck trips on the roads. We lease land from the Port of Los Angeles and we have a 75-acre site and three buildings. We employ 500 workers during non-peak periods and 700 workers during peak periods.” Curry continues, “Our customers include Lowes, Home Depot, Sears, Target and other retailers. Instructions to Cal Cartage are transmitted when the container ship arrives at the Ports of Los Angeles or Long Beach. We are given instructions about which containers have which particular pieces of cargo that need to be transferred from the oceangoing container into a 53 foot trailer.” Meanwhile, congestion is having a negative impact on cargo-handling at Long Beach and Los Angeles, “The current congestion problem at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is very serious and we are experiencing major delays in picking up containers from the steamship line terminals. The congestion problem has been getting worse for the last year and a half. Since the volumes of containers being processed are only going up very slightly, we know that volume isn’t the issue.” The issue Curry says, “is that we used to have vessels coming in with a 6,000 teu (20 foot unit) capacity and today we are seeing ships coming in that are twice that size and even more. When the ocean carriers began building the 16,000 teu and 18,000 teu ships, they realized the advantage to them in greater economies of scale, greater fuel efficiencies and bigger ships making less calls at ports. The problem is that they did not allow for the impact on the terminals that do not have the technology to process the larger numbers of containers that are coming off these ships. The result is that when the truckers can’t move the higher container volume fast enough to get the containers off the docks, you start to run into backups, congestion and delays.” Curry says that several years ago, “the steamship lines opted to stop providing chassis needed to transport containers by truck. The result was that companies that leased chassis came in to supply chassis to truckers. The problem is that the supply from the leasing companies has been uneven and sometimes there is a shortage, which causes delays in pickups and deliveries and contributes to the congestion problem. The supply problem is getting much better and the problem is not as serious as it was, but there continues to be a problem with repairing chassis. We continue to see thousands of chassis lined up at terminals doing nothing. I assume that they probably are waiting to be repaired, but since they aren’t in use, that means there are less chassis available for truckers.” He says many people have advanced the idea of the two ports working 24 hours per day, but he says this is not realistic: “There has been a lot of talk of going over to a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week terminal operation at Long Beach and Los Angeles. Currently we have an 8am to 5pm shift during the daytime, followed by a 6pm to 3am shift and then a 3am to 8am shift. However, since longshoremen are paid at a much higher rate after 5pm, the cost of cargo handling goes way up and there is also a problem of not enough workers wanting to do the late night shifts. So I can’t see that a 24 hour operation will ever happen here because the work rules for longshoremen simply don’t allow it to function economically. I can’t see it happening.” Curry has “been with the company 60 plus years and worked for the company before I went into the service and after I came out in 1954. California Cartage Company was established in 1944.” However, the company may be displaced from its current location because of the decision by the Port of Los Angeles to replace the Cal Cartage facility with a rail transfer site operated by the Burlington Northern Railroad, “Ten years ago, the Port of Los Angeles decided to lease our property to the Burlington Northern Railroad. The railroad plans to build a transfer facility so that it will not have to move truckloads for transfer onto rail at its Vernon (California) facility and instead will load containers at the site that Cal Cartage presently occupies. We have been in court fighting this decision. But we can only hope that we win because we will have no place to go if the courts affirm the decision of the Port of Los Angeles to lease our present site to the Burlington Northern Railroad.” The PMA (Pacific Maritime Association) dispute with the ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) has added to delays and congestion, Curry says but he hopes “once a new contract is ratified that we will be back to normal within two to three months. There are, however, these continuing obstacles to operating efficiently that need to be addressed.”