By Leo Ryan, AJOTKevin Doherty, CEO of Montreal Gateway Terminals Partnership, is unabashedly bullish about the significant contribution of MGT’s two container terminals to the competitiveness of Montreal, notably as a gateway between North America and Europe. In this regard, he notes that shippers benefit from “superior reliability, consistency and transit times due to unmatched dwell times.” Both CN and Canadian Pacific Railway service MTG year-round operations, with direct links to major US railroads. The strategic, deep inland location is also connected to a network of highways leading to markets in Quebec, Ontario, Western Canada as well as the United States. Regular MGT customers among global container carriers include Hapag-Lloyd, OOCL, Hanjin Shipping, MSC, Maersk Line, CMA CGM, and APL. Thanks to rapid, fluid movements, Doherty affirms, “the result is a clockwork operation in which 95% of all cargo has been loaded onto a rail car and is on its way to inland destinations in under 72 hours.” With more than 24,000 feet of on-dock rail, MGT says it has “the only true direct ship-to-rail design available in North America. Leveraging an extensive and seamless intermodal network, ships, trains and trucks interconnect to deliver cargo quickly from point of origin to final destination.” CN and Canadian Pacific Railway have access to every berth – thereby eliminating any transshipment requirement. Thus, the ‘Chicago portal’ through Montreal enjoys the advantages of almost instant loading to railcars. (The Midwest represents about one quarter of total Montreal container traffic of nearly 1.5 million TEUs.) Another positive feature: the balanced trade between imports and exports. The volume allows shipping lines to offer regularly scheduled services with weekly and bi-weekly arrivals and departures. Earlier this fall, CN and MGT announced that a stronger working relationship in the past year has markedly improved customer service metrics for container traffic. Two key metrics have underscored the advances in performance for supply chain efficiencies. For one, the average ocean terminal dwell time (the time it takes for a container to be placed on a rail car after being discharged from a vessel at MGT’s CAST terminal) has been shaved by almost 40%. And secondly, the ratio of CN rail cars available compared with the number of discharged containers awaiting shipment has reportedly improved by more than 200% since August 2010.