RADAR SCREEN
Journal of Commerce
Monday, July 25, 2005

Jacksonville climbs port ranks with MOL terminal

The Port of Jacksonville could vault into the top five U.S. East and Gulf Coast container ports as a result of the Aug. 3 agreement it intends to sign with MOL. On that day, MOL will also break ground on a 158-acre container terminal on undeveloped land at the Dames Point Marine Terminal in North Jacksonville , which will become its hub for the U.S. Southeast market. MOL, whose car carriers have called at the port for years, plans to start the first direct liner service between Jacksonville and Asia when the terminal opens in 2008. It is considering bringing a new all-water service through either the Panama or Suez canals to Jaxport and having one or more of its South American services call there. The $200 million terminal, MOL's first East Coast facility, will handle 360,000 TEUs annually, which could grow to 800,000 and push Jaxport 's annual container volume past the 1.5 million-TEU mark. The port handled 727,000 TEUs in 2004. The terminal, which will be operated by TraPac, MOL's terminal operating company, will likely handle business from other carriers as well.

ACE in place for US-Mexican truckers

The process of trade processing is going to change along the Mexico-U.S. border now that Customs and Border Protection is introducing the automated truck-manifest system portion of ACE, the Automated Commercial Environment. Customs is introducing the manifest system in Nogales and neighboring ports this month. It allows truckers to file cargo data electronically directly to Customs. In the traditional, paper-based manifest system that ACE will replace, customs brokers took charge of filing manifests. But brokers won't be able to use their Automated Broker Interface to file with ACE, which means that they may have to invest in data systems that can communicate with ACE, or work some other solution. Mexican brokers also traditionally arranged dray movements with drivers on a first-come, first-served basis. Advance cargo-data requirements, which include the driver's name in the data that's filed 30 minutes before a truck arrives at the border, may change the first-in, first-out system. On the upside, the Free and Secure Trade (FAST) system has caught on along the southern border. Most drivers in the drayage business already have their FAST cards.

Los Angeles, Long Beach discuss chassis pool

Los Angeles and Long Beach would like to form a portwide chassis pool similar to the one that Virginia International Terminals operates on the East Coast, but terminal operators say it is easier for a state-run port authority to operate a chassis pool than for landlord ports to do so. The Port of Los Angeles last week had a meeting with port tenants to discuss how such a pool would work, with the speakers including representatives from VIT. The benefits of a chassis pool are obvious as the ports would free up dozens of acres now used for chassis storage to be used more productively for cargo handling. However, when issues such as maintenance and repair, liability and tracking of chassis are considered, terminal operators and shipping lines say it will be difficult to get port tenants to voluntarily participate in a common pool.