Chassis Pooling to Enhance Intermodal Efficiency

Historical Use of Chassis In the late 1960’s and 1970’s chassis were “married” to containers from the ship and subsequently transported by motor carriers and on TOFC rail cars 1980’s stack car technology no longer required TOFC movement, but rail terminals still discharged containers to chassis 1990’s and onward has seen more ocean terminals work ships direct to “bomb carts” in a grounded terminal environment

The Basic Challenge for Carriers, Ports, and Other Intermodal Terminals: As container volumes grow, so does the need for better asset efficiencies, and customer (trucker) experience As container volumes grow, so do demands on terminal space, both marine and rail.

The Intermodal System depends upon a relatively simply piece of equipment to move a container between an intermodal terminal (rail or ocean) and an origin or destination: Intermodal Chassis

Chassis Pools Chassis pools, historically, had been used by smaller groups of carriers to try to reduce the number of chassis needed to handle growing cargo volumes. They had been contained within Vessel Sharing Alliances. It had been difficult to gain broad acceptance of a pool in a geographic area because of differing service, facility, chassis ownership configurations, and theory.

Key Benefits of Chassis Pools Better Terminal Space Utilization Better Equipment Utilization Cost Savings to Terminals and Lines Environmental Benefits Reduced Terminal Turn Time for Trucks and the Customer More Uniform Equipment Quality

OCEMA OCEAN CARRIER EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION INC. Agreement filed with the FMC 18 of Top Containership Carriers are members Lead ocean carrier organization on U.S. inland/equipment issues Facilitates the pooling agreements, and legislative association for safety and interchange

U.S. Chassis Fleet Domestic / Int’l Ownership Provider (to the motor carrier) Operating Structure Total Est. 700,000

Co-op Chassis Pools in the U.S. There are currently 6 major co-op pools in the U.S. with an estimated chassis inventory of well over 100,000 units run by the OCEMA affiliate CCM. Standardized business rules and M&R to federal standards and above. Vessel Sharing Alliance pools are estimated at another 100,000 driven by terminal and customer efficiencies. Norfolk (Hampton Roads) in conjunction with carriers runs a single port authority pool of material size.

What next? Models of third parties providing chassis to truckers directly Ocean carriers look at global model of truckers provide chassis, they are not resident on the ocean terminals nor necessarily owned by ocean carriers Shift in the paradigm over time Individual line’s strategy how to proceed Stakeholders need to dialogue for effective transitions