Internet System Aims to Free Up Port Congestion

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Internet System Aims to Free Up Port Congestion

By DAVID GREENBERG

Staff Reporter

Looking to alleviate the massive gridlock of trucks entering the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, a Web-based scheduling system will be installed by terminal operators to spread out container pickup times.

Long Beach-based eModal.com Inc.’s eModal Scheduler system will allow the ports’ 15 terminal operators to post times that containers are available in as little as 15-minute intervals and allow truckers to choose the most convenient time slots for pickup. Ports at Los Angeles and Long Beach will be the first in the nation to use the system.

Truckers attempting to enter the ports during the peak hours of 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. have been known to wait for hours to gain entrance to terminals.

“It stands a chance of being a marvelous tool to manage truck traffic flow into and out of the harbors,” said Jay Winter, executive secretary of the Steamship Association of Southern California, a lobbying group for terminal operators. “There is no management system for harbor trucking. It’s totally unstructured.”

But truckers doubt the system will eliminate lines of idle trucks The eModal Scheduler, they complained, will not solve other delays, such as not having enough longshoreman on site when trucks arrive. Poor weather conditions and freeway traffic also would also render the system unworkable if pickup times are posted in 15-minute intervals, they said.

Additionally, truckers getting paid by the trip rather than by the hour still would want to be at the terminals when they open up at 8 a.m.

“They are putting the cart before the horse,” said John Drewes, president of Devine & Peters Intermodal, a Sacramento trucking company. “Everybody is trying to make it out to be the cure-all, as if this one solution is the magic wand that is going to instantaneously eliminate the delays.”

With an undisclosed amount from investors, eModal formed in October 1999 and launched a web site the following February for Trans Pacific Container Service Corp. at the Port of L.A. and International Transportation Service Inc. at the Port of Long Beach. Currently, 46 terminals nationwide, including 11 of the 15 at the two local ports, use the Web site.

The web site does not schedule appointments for truckers, something the new eModal system would do, said John Cushing, wModal’s president.

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