The newly automated Middle Harbor Terminal in Long Beach is seeing average truck time visits of less than half of what the average truck time visits for the 13 terminal Los Angeles — Long Beach port complex are as a whole.
Anthony Otto, President of the Long Beach Container Terminal (LBCT), while speaking at a California Trucking Association meeting last week, said the average turn times were 38 to 40 minutes at Middle Harbor. Truck turn times as reported by the Harbor Trucking Association for the whole port complex were averaging 85 minutes in April.
LBCT is in the first phase of a $1.3 billion automation project that is scheduled for completion in 2019. Last week, automation of vessel, yard, gate and on-dock rail operations in the 342 acre Middle Harbor were completed.
Keys to improved operations include:
- Required trucker appointments to better manage flow.
- Repositioning of container stacks to run perpendicular from the vessel instead of parallel which has been the conventional method at U.S. terminals. An increased traffic flow is the result with less congestion.
- A computerized terminal operating system that allows for containers of different types to be in a particular stack in order to enhance efficiency. This allows for a dual transaction, where a trucker can drop off an export container and pick up and import container from the same stack.
Details on the LCBT Middle Harbor Redevelopment Project are available at:
http://www.middleharbor.com/
