Bay Area shippers were heartened to learn that Hyundai Merchant Marine Co. Ltd. (HMM) brought back its weekly container shipping service, the Pacific Southwest (PSW), last month.
By Patrick Burnson
Published: June, 2010
This HMM service also provides the current quickest times from Oakland to the ports of Pusan, Kaohsiung and Xiamen at 11, 14 and 15 days, respectively. “2009 was a definite challenge to the shipping industry. Nevertheless, we are looking forward into 2010 with optimistic planning and forecast in growth,” said Y.I. Song, HMM Chairman and CEO. “Part of our planning includes increased capacity on the PSW as well as other summer deployment services to meet demand for our customers.”
APL Receives Award for Highest Volume in Oakland
The Port of Oakland honored carrier APL last month with its new award for moving the most cargo of any carrier through its cargo gateway. At the awards event, Port Executive Director Omar Benjamin told APL executives, staff and longshore workers, “Your achievement of transporting through the Port of Oakland in 2009 a 30 percent increase in cargo volume from 2008 is substantial and all the more remarkable considering the state of the economy last year.” Benjamin continued: “APL and Eagle Marine Services have been strong, valued partners with the Port. This is a new award that the Port is giving and we are delighted to present it to APL.”APL received the Port of Oakland’s “Highest Volume Carrier 2009” award for moving 244,249 TEUs. A TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit) is the international standard of measurement for cargo volume and equals one 20 foot-long container.
“We would also like to acknowledge and thank APL for a highly successful first call service—the PS2. It serves the needs of importers who must move their products quickly and efficiently through the Oakland gateway,” said Port Maritime Director James Kwon. It has become the importers’ retail express service for Northern California.” First port-of-call service at Oakland is a container ship that comes directly from a port in Asia and makes Oakland its first destination in the United States.
APL’s history in Oakland goes back to the Gold Rush, and it’s been serving the Bay Area ever since. It was a historic accomplishment when APL’s predecessor company inaugurated trans-Pacific trade in 1867 with regular service to Yokohama and Shanghai.
APL provides comprehensive westbound export services that serve an incredibly diverse range of customers—from beef producers in Nebraska, to hay farmers in Iowa, to fruit, vegetable and nut shippers in California’s Central Valley. APL has helped the Port of Oakland become the third-busiest on the West Coast, and the fifth-busiest in the United States.
IWLA Opposes Change to Federal Preemption of Trucking Rules
The International Warehouse Logistics Association is urging Congress to reject legislative language that would weaken federal preemption of state and local regulation of trucking in the nation’s ports because it believes that it represents a backdoor attempt to drive independent owner-operator truckers out of business at those locations—including at the Port of Oakland.
In a recent letter to Peter DeFazio (D-OR), chairman, and John J. Duncan Jr. (R-TN), ranking minority member of the House on Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, IWLA President Joel D. Anderson said proposed amendments to the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act would undermine federal preemption by allowing local governments to regulate port trucking when it comes to environmental and port security matters.
“The proposed amendments are not really about environmental and security concerns at the nation’s ports,” Anderson said in his letter. “They are an attempt to gain through legislation what the courts have found to be unlawful: local regulation of truck drayage services at the nation’s ports. Specifically, the proposed amendments are designed to allow the ports to ban independent owner-operators in favor of employee drivers.”
Current federal law preempts state and local regulation of trucking in interstate and foreign commerce except in regard to safety. Proponents of the amendment improperly characterize the need for change as necessary to improve air quality and port security. Several major U.S. ports, including the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Seattle, have already initiated very successful Clean Truck Programs, Anderson pointed out to the subcommittee leaders. He cited the example of the California Air Resources Board which, in conjunction with the South Coast Air Quality Management District, implemented a clean trucks program that led to an estimated 80 percent reduction in diesel emissions two years ahead of its target date.
“This occurred without changing federal law,” Anderson noted. “This and similar efforts underway at other major U.S. ports demonstrate that it is not necessary to rewrite longstanding federal trucking laws to accomplish significant environmental improvements in port areas.”
