The White House announcement that the Port of Los Angeles would unclog the supply chains by working 24-7 appears to be something of an oversimplification of the problem.
“Nothing will change if ports operate 24 hours,” logistics professional Siegfried Adam Jr reportedly said. “There are not enough truckers to work three shifts per day nor does the hinterland infrastructure support hundreds of more containers to be unloaded in a 24-hour period. It’s a dumb idea. It solves nothing.”
What critics of Congress and the executive branch see is another Washington, D.C., solution that will not necessarily fix anything. Although Pres. Joe Biden may have garnered media attention and political headwinds with his mandate, Port of LA officials and freight sector professionals are far less optimistic.
“Port throughput is not just taking containers off steamships, but having the capacity in the yard to position those containers, the chassis to put the containers on, the drivers to take the freight from the ports, and capacity in the rail network to facilitate the hoped-for acceleration in port throughput,” senior analyst at ACT Research Kenny Vieth reportedly said. “While the President’s recognition of the situation is welcome and will undoubtedly help at the margin, this effort resembles squeezing a balloon: The problem appears likely to be pushed to the next mode with insufficient capacity.”
In more simple terms, the president and other Washington, D.C., insiders see the bottleneck occurring at a singular point in the supply chain. Media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal have reported the record-breaking number of cargo ships anchored off the coast, unable to dock and offload.
But beyond the splashy headlines, freight and logistics experts understand the supply chain is a start-to-finish mess. Reports indicate that Southern California warehouse capacity remains nearly maxed out. Retailers are holding on to containers longer, making it increasingly difficult for truckers to swap them out at ports such as Los Angeles and Long Beach. Even if the 80 or more cargo ships off the coast were able to dock, where would the goods, materials, and containers go?
“Twenty-four-hour operations at the ports impact all the downstream resources as well, warehouses, trucks, trains, distribution centers, retail outlets and factories,” North American Council for Freight Efficiency official Rick Mihelic reportedly said. “Fixing the problem at the port moves it to the next step in the supply chain. Trucking is already operating at capacity, so adding more throughput requires them to operate more hours and more efficiently than they currently are able or willing to do.”
Port officials, logistics experts, and boots-on-the-ground truckers widely agree that the announcement for the major West Coast ports to run 24-7 is naïve thinking that fails to account for the moving parts.
“Listening to the press conference, Biden spoke to Longshoremen, FedEx, Target, Home Depot…but I didn’t hear mention of MTO (marine terminal operators) and truckers,” Bill Aboudi of OPS Trucking in Oakland reportedly said. “In an intermodal chain, all the parties have to work together.”
Sources: wsj.com, ccjdigital.com
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