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December 19, 2023–With overall containerized cargo at a low point for much of the past year, the country’s supply chain industry has an opportunity to make needed adjustments to ease the movement of freight through the system, a point emphasized in a recent Cargomatic podcast.

“There’s a million ways you can do it better,” said Dan Walsh, President and CEO of TRAC Intermodal, the country’s largest marine chassis provider and pool manager.

With freight levels lower than during the pandemic, Walsh thinks “it would be a crying shame if we didn’t use the extra oxygen that we have now to make ourselves better.”

That’s a sentiment that Gene Seroka, Executive Director of the Port of Los Angeles (POLA), agrees with, especially when it comes to moving containers from marine terminal yards once they have been off-loaded from ships.

“Cargo has to move off that terminal tarmac and, with the benefit of history, that’s what’s slowed us down the most during COVID: cargo was sitting at the port,” Seroka told Bloomberg Television.

“If we can get that cargo off the port property in two to four days by rail and truck, then you’re really starting to see the capacity gains that we all look for,” he said.

In line with that effort, the Port of Los Angeles has recently announced the development of a new project called the Terminal Island Maritime Support Facility Project, which will comprise 80 acres and a four-lane, rail-roadway grade separation.

Seroka told Cargomatic that “it’s a project where we’re not only trying to develop that property so it can be complementary to our marine terminals, rail operators and truckers, but we’re also building flyovers and rail access to be able to move cargo in and out.”

He said that densifying the site’s rail capability from an infrastructure perspective will give the port a “more competitive advantage” to regain market share from East and Gulf Coast ports that was lost during year-long labor negotiations in 2022–2023.

“Most of what we’ve lost is that intact ocean box coming from Asia, running all the way through to one of 14 major distribution hubs in the middle part of the country,” he said.

A main key to that recovery of lost cargoes also lies in showing shippers the port can avoid congestion by using the new facility to better manage the flow of container traffic through the port, especially during surges.

“Being able to activate property like this on Terminal Island should help us really be able to control the valves as cargo ebbs and flows and peaks in the years to come,” he said.

“These are some of the learnings that we’ve taken away from the peak of the Covid surge,” Seroka stated.