I worked for Maersk Ops back office for a couple of years. This brought back memories of the seemingly endless hours I use to put in to prepare the Discharge & Load Coprar and the dreaded Stowage plan.
Vitor, allow me in this conversation. I also have been in the industry and you have done a great job describing overall operations. A piece of the container shipping puzzle you didn’t cover was chassis, and these are a key ingredient to the operations. Since there are proprietary pools, third party pools, and grey pools, this adds another degree of complexity. Some trucking companies in LA claim that chassis availability is one of the primary issues: no chassis, then no container move in/out of the port. Thanks for writing your article.
Can you expand on this? I imagine there’s lots Vitor left out that is worth expanding on because that is the nature of writing these kinds of things. Since no piece can be comprehensive I’d rather people add what they think was missing rather than give another task to the original author (and I really want to know what’s going on with chassis).
Elizabeth, every container that moves must be placed onto a chassis (wheels). When an import loaded arriving container is off-loaded from the ship, it is typically placed (without wheels) onto the dock yard stack of containers. The party receiving the container (consignee) is notified that the container is now available and they typically make arrangements with a local trucker/drayage company to pickup the available loaded container. The trucker usually must obtain a chassis from one of the pools (mentioned in my earlier comment) and go to the shipyard dock to pickup the available load where the shipyard places the loaded container onto the chassis the trucker brought into the yard for pickup. The loaded container is then moved from the shipyard to the local consignee for delivery. After it is delivered and unloaded, the now empty container (still on the chassis) must be returned to the ship dock and then the chassis returned to the pool. However, empty containers are piling up in the ports (https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/port-los-angeles-import-backups-ease-empty-containers-pile-up-2021-11-16/) impeding the return of newly empty containers, and thus you see the trucking companies reporting, “Our chassis are sitting under these empties that have nowhere to go.” and “Not because we have capacity issues but we cannot return the empties for days. Empties sit on our chassis in our yard(s) accruing charges.” So chassis availability to pickup loaded containers from the ports is currently very unreliable. It is a complicated issue and what I’ve described above is a generalized explanation. Hope this helps.
Yes, I deliberately left out detailed discussion of the present situation in Long Beach, instead focusing on what “normal” operations are like. Local conditions also vary a lot, for example I hadn’t heard of these chassis pools you speak of.
I worked for Maersk Ops back office for a couple of years. This brought back memories of the seemingly endless hours I use to put in to prepare the Discharge & Load Coprar and the dreaded Stowage plan.
Out of curiosity, do you broadly agree with my depiction of the industry? Anything I missed or mischaracterized?
Vitor, allow me in this conversation. I also have been in the industry and you have done a great job describing overall operations. A piece of the container shipping puzzle you didn’t cover was chassis, and these are a key ingredient to the operations. Since there are proprietary pools, third party pools, and grey pools, this adds another degree of complexity. Some trucking companies in LA claim that chassis availability is one of the primary issues: no chassis, then no container move in/out of the port. Thanks for writing your article.
Can you expand on this? I imagine there’s lots Vitor left out that is worth expanding on because that is the nature of writing these kinds of things. Since no piece can be comprehensive I’d rather people add what they think was missing rather than give another task to the original author (and I really want to know what’s going on with chassis).
Elizabeth, every container that moves must be placed onto a chassis (wheels). When an import loaded arriving container is off-loaded from the ship, it is typically placed (without wheels) onto the dock yard stack of containers. The party receiving the container (consignee) is notified that the container is now available and they typically make arrangements with a local trucker/drayage company to pickup the available loaded container. The trucker usually must obtain a chassis from one of the pools (mentioned in my earlier comment) and go to the shipyard dock to pickup the available load where the shipyard places the loaded container onto the chassis the trucker brought into the yard for pickup. The loaded container is then moved from the shipyard to the local consignee for delivery. After it is delivered and unloaded, the now empty container (still on the chassis) must be returned to the ship dock and then the chassis returned to the pool. However, empty containers are piling up in the ports (https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/port-los-angeles-import-backups-ease-empty-containers-pile-up-2021-11-16/) impeding the return of newly empty containers, and thus you see the trucking companies reporting, “Our chassis are sitting under these empties that have nowhere to go.” and “Not because we have capacity issues but we cannot return the empties for days. Empties sit on our chassis in our yard(s) accruing charges.” So chassis availability to pickup loaded containers from the ports is currently very unreliable. It is a complicated issue and what I’ve described above is a generalized explanation. Hope this helps.
Yes, I deliberately left out detailed discussion of the present situation in Long Beach, instead focusing on what “normal” operations are like. Local conditions also vary a lot, for example I hadn’t heard of these chassis pools you speak of.