Transport Panelists (CONT’D FROM PAGE 8)
“I think more transparency is helpful to the extent we can do it,” Jefferies said. “We don’t always know who the beneficial cargo owner is, and if you have a sense of where that end destination is for the container, so maybe you put all the cargo for one BCO in one spot in the yard. There are any number of steps that can be taken, information sharing about where there is available capacity.” Rutkowski added: “I think this stems back to devel- oping trust and good lines of communications with your transportation partners. This is something we preach all the time with our shippers, especially now. The shippers that have had and built those relationships with their pro- viders are the ones that are being most successful navi- gating those troubled waters.” Trucking, rail, and shipping officials say that due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the enormous changes in buy- ing habits by consumers, all modes of transportation are moving record amounts of cargo. WSC’s Butler told the
waiting outside its Chicago terminal just to go in and un- load because there were so many containers they could not get out,” Jefferies said. “Some pretty dramatic steps were taken to increase capacity, storage capacity around the center part of the country, trying to motivate pick-ups in off-hours, but it’s an ongoing battle.” The panelists — Butler, Jefferies, American Trucking Associations President Chris Spear and National Shippers Strategic Transportation Council Executive Director Gail Rutkowski — saluted the White House for its efforts to en- courage 24/7 operations at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. AAR’s Jefferies said a 24/7 supply chain is not a pana- cea, and there needs to be more cooperation and trans- parency among trucking and railroad and ocean carriers to make all modes run smoother.
audience that there is now enough capacity to move the current freight under optimal conditions. “Nobody is happy about how we’re man- aging this. Everyone here is moving more freight than ever before. The problem is be- cause of the congestion; we are moving it in a very inefficient way,” he said. “At a port, you might be picking up three containers to get to one to put it on a train. That’s not speeding up the process. Spear said that in the future he is con- cerned about the impact the White House executive order mandating COVID-19 vac- cines for companies with more than 100 employees may have on the supply chain if trucking does not obtain an exemption. “Looking at our workforce, we’ve gone to great lengths to look at the infection rate and the mortality rate,” he said, “It is extraor- dinarily low, and that should not come as a surprise to anybody, including the admin- istration. If you look at the role of a driver, they’re very independent, and that’s reflect- ed in the number of drivers who said they would leave that employer if it’s mandated.” Spear said the mandate would put more pressure on the supply chain when those on the panel said it already is stretched thin. Mostly, the panelists agreed that there is no one quick fix to get the supply chain back up to speed, and NSSTC’s Rutkowski said now that the supply chain’s flaws have been exposed, it’s time to rebuild. “In my mind, we should not go back to normal because normal is not working now,” Rutkowski said. “I think we need to come up with a new normal and define what that is, together as a united supply chain.”
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