Page 22 - Port of Baltimore - Issue 4 - 2022

TERMINALS
Surge in Volume Creates Industry-Wide Bottlenecks
Improvements at Seagirt come at a time where increases in cargo volume have been experienced throughout the industry as the global economy emerges from COVID.
“We’ve definitely seen an uptick in cargo over the past year,” said Hogans. “It’s not only here at the Port of Baltimore, but an uptick throughout the supply chain that affects all of our partners, from the truckers to the distribution centers — everyone is facing the challenges of increased cargo and how to manage that.”
The two biggest challenges for truckers in particular are a shortage of chassis and the container congestion due to the increased volume, according to Armand Patella, EVP of the Maryland Motor Truck Association.
Congestion is an issue “not just at Seagirt but everywhere in the container supply chain,” Patella said. “It’s also congested at destination warehouses, rail yards and truckers’ facilities as our importers struggle with issues like finding space for an avalanche of goods, labor to unload and sort it, and inland trucking capacity to move the goods to the final destination.”
That said, Patella noted that East Coast ports gained an advantage by watching the bottlenecks
play out on the West Coast first, which enabled them to prepare for a similar situation. “In Baltimore, for example, we already had off-terminal storage yards and had just finished the second Post-Panamax berth. PAC selectively sent ships to anchor when they could, which helped spread out the import discharge.”
To further ease congestion, Patella said, PAC
has “slightly modified their weekday gate hours
and opened half days on select Saturdays. Most importantly, all of our trucks have been able to return their empties — a huge problem at other ports — which allows the chassis to be used again. At times, we’ve hit snags with import availability due to heavy congestion, but at least we’re not waiting two to three hours just to enter the gate like some other ports.”
[20] The Port of Baltimore ■ ISSUE 4 / 2022