The new yard will have room for 4,000 chassis. The revitalization of a chassis depot with two prominent providers is poised to enhance the Port of New York and New Jersey’s ongoing effort to ensure there is enough available equipment to cope with the increasingly frequent arrival of mega-ships.
The takeover by Columbia Container Services of the yard on Bay Avenue in Port Elizabeth next Monday — with TRAC Intermodal and Direct ChassisLink Inc. (DCLI) as the intermodal equipment providers (IEPs) — comes in the wake of the collapse of efforts to create a port-wide interoperative, or gray, pool at the East Coast’s largest port.
The seemingly finalized gray pool, which is seen by port stakeholders as key to the port’s smooth future operations, fell apart in July, when one of two IEPs that had committed to creating the plan — DCLI — pulled out. The collapse stoked concerns that the port would be without a key equipment supply service just as it comes under pressure to load and unload thousands of containers, and remove them from the port, in a short period of time.
Port officials said that although the Bay Avenue depot — now named Elizabeth Chassis Depot — is no substitute for a port-wide gray pool, it will help provide easier access to chassis.
Columbia CEO Bruce Fenimore said that although the old yard supplied chassis serving only Maher Terminals, the new yard has the advantage of catering to truckers that serve any of the terminals in the port. TRAC will start operations at the 31-acre yard — which has room for 4,000 trailers — on Monday, and DCLI will either begin operating the same day or soon after, he said. Ron Joseph, chief operating officer for DCLI, said the company will open there some time in November.
“I think it’s going to help the port’s growth tremendously,” Fenimore said. “I think it’s the beginning of a great situation where the chassis are all off the terminals … The truckers can come in, quickly get an available chassis, and go out.”
Fenimore said his own company will repair and maintain chassis, using workers from the International Longshoremen’s Association. He commended the union for “giving us efficiencies at the gate that will allow us to put trucks through twice as quickly in the past.”
Beth Rooney, assistant director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s port division, said the depot will clearly help the port, and give another option for truckers looking to get chassis, pending the development of a gray pool.
“It will be a shared facility, shared operation, shared staffing,” Rooney said, adding that the authority believes there is “an adequate supply of chassis in the market. This is another positive development that helps with the availability of chassis.”
A gray chassis pool was among top recommendations of a 2014 report by an industry-wide task force that was eventually transformed into the Council on Port Performance, which was convened to find ways to improve efficiency at the port. Council members have consistently cited the so-called “gray” pool as one of the top three priorities at the port.
The perception that New York-New Jersey needed one was heightened as the port approached the opening of the elevated Bayonne Bridge, which until June was too low to enable ships sized more than 9,500 TEU to pass below. That prevented them from stopping at three out of the port’s four main terminals, leaving only one — GCT Bayonne — accessible to big ships.
Yet the effort to get the three main IEPs in the port — DCLI, TRAC, and Flexi-Van — to form a gray pool failed to advance amid disagreements over governance and management issues. And the agreement between DCLI and TRAC collapsed three months ago, in large part over the necessity for DCLI to move its chassis pool from inside APM Terminals in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and find a new location from which to operate. The company said it could not go ahead with a pool when its future was so uncertain.
The Port Performance Council is expected to consider a range of issues at its next meeting in November. Among them, is whether the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey should get more involved in creating and running a pool. Other issues under consideration are whether the authority should provide land at a “competitive” rate from which the IEPs can operate out of, and how to get the three main IEPs to once again consider creating a pool. Also on the table is the possible involvement of the Ocean Carrier Equipment Management Association in managing the pool.
Keith Lovetro, TRAC’s CEO, said last month that although the company in the past supplied chassis for the Maher-operated terminal, the new depot “has a greater application to the drayman” because they can serve other terminals.
The depot opening is part of the company’s effort to not “let chassis be the holdup,” even if there is no portwide pool, he said.
Contact Hugh R. Morley at Hugh.Morley@ihsmarkit.com and follow him on Twitter: @HughRMorley_JOC.