As the United States seeks to reduce trucking congestion on highways and as trucking companies seek to reduce the $33 billion price tag in trucking delays for transporting goods and as U.S. ports seek to reduce diesel pollution, the establishment of dedicated marine highway terminals for coastal and inland transportation based on the Rotterdam Short Sea Terminals (RST) model in the Netherlands may offer a solution.
In 2010, RST processed 700,000 containers going to and from the port of Rotterdam to destinations including Ireland, the United Kingdom, Russia and the Mediterranean.
That is the equivalent of nearly 2,000 truckloads 365 days per year.
Executives at RST point out that their terminal handles mostly container moves between Rotterdam and other European ports as part of their short sea shipping service. Feeder ships are smaller container ships that pick up and deliver cargoes at Rotterdam’s bigger container terminals that service the large ocean-going container ships.
Sjaak Mastenbroek, RST’s operations manager proudly points to the high degree of integration exemplified by RST terminal operations linking cranes to container ships to barges to trucks and to rail cars. This allows for quick pickups and efficient deliveries of cargo to end-users, minimizes trucking and fuel consumption and lowers diesel emissions. In the United States, ports are moving toward a solution to diesel pollution; in Rotterdam they appear to have found the solution.
The extensive inland waterway system provided by Rotterdam’s strategic location allows for an extensive river barge service linking RST’s terminal to Germany and Eastern Europe. Along the Rhine river, for example, numerous smaller terminals with boom cranes process container shipments coming by barge to and from Rotterdam. If U.S. farm exports continue to expand and if fuel prices for trucking stay high, building a system of small Rhine river-type container terminals may be a good investment to expedite more inland waterway shipping. This would create new shipping along the Mississippi and adjoining rivers and provide better links to ports on the U.S. Gulf coast.
Mastenbroek says that RST was born in 1997 after the bankruptcy of Bell Lines an Irish/UK company that used Rotterdam as the hub of shipments to Ireland, the UK and other European countries:
“The company owned 13 vessels including two open-hatch container ships built in Japan with the additional innovation of the accommodations located over the bow. The company also owned its own trucking fleet and offered a one-stop shop for customers seeking to use its land/sea services.”
He said that the problem with integrating trucking, shipping and terminal operations under one roof was that maintaining high standards of operational efficiency was difficult. A problem in shipping could spill over into the terminal operations or trucking.
Mastenbroek cited the location of one end-user in Spain, where the return of empty containers was slow and required the dispatch of a ship just to retrieve the empty containers, making it a money-losing voyage because no revenue-generating loaded containers could be deployed:
“Trucking costs also increased at some destinations where there was no economical way to retrieve empty containers because of distance issues between the port and end users.”
Another problem occurred with careless stevedoring procedures. A crane not properly fastened during a storm in Ireland crashed into a second crane resulting in total damage to both cranes and damage to a major rail line. The company’s operations had to be halted, contributing to its bankruptcy.
The Bell Lines bankruptcy, Mastenbroek says, resulted in Steinveg, a stevedoring company and European Combined Terminals, both Dutch companies, teaming up to acquire the stevedoring side of Bell Lines in Rotterdam.
RST operations began in 1997 processing 200,000 containers, a figure that rose to 700,000 in 2010. The company started with five cranes and now has nine
