Port Truckers See ‘Daunting Task’ to Comply With International Container Weight Rules
Truckers who work at ports fear costly delays and hampered operations will result when new international rules requiring verified weights for all ocean container cargo take effect July 1.
That is the date when Safety of Life at Sea, or SOLAS, rules take effect worldwide. Ocean carrier interests, including carriers, labor and insurers pursued the rules to reduce accidents and damage from overweight and misloaded containers on vessels.
The new requirements “seem to be a daunting task and a huge undertaking,” said Curtis Whalen, executive director of the Intermodal Motor Carriers Conference, which is part of American Trucking Associations. “It’s totally unknown how this will work.”
He told Transport Topics he is convinced that truckers will bear the financial and operational burden in terms of lost revenue and freight opportunities whenever they are forced to waste time finding a place to weigh a container or track down weight information from others.
“Trucker impact is a U.S.-implementation issue, and we are not directly involved in that,” said Anne Kappel, a spokeswoman for Washington-based World Shipping Council. Its members include the largest ocean carriers, such as Maersk Line, CMA CGM and Mediterranean Shipping Co.
“This is not an issue trucking can solve,” Whalen said, since weighing container and contents are the shipper’s responsibility.
Ocean carriers are “sensitive to the need to avoid anything that would impact terminal efficiency and fluidity or create delays for truckers,” said Stacey Normington, administrator of the Ocean Carrier Equipment Management Association, whose members set container and chassis management policies.
“The SOLAS amendments are clear in assigning shippers’, carriers’ and terminal operators’ responsibilities,” according to a guide on the World Shipping Council website. “The parties in the supply chain will need to make arrangements for the timely transmission and exchange of verified container weight information.”
The guide makes no mention of truckers.
Whalen said he is urging members to attend every meeting on the subject and raise the industry’s concerns. He also said he could recommend to members that they not pick up containers unless there is a document showing the weight is certified, due to the potential for delays that would reduce productivity and efficiency for drayage carriers.
He also noted several unanswered questions about the process. For example, he said it’s unclear how shippers determining the weight of a container and its cargo will factor in the weight of chassis and fuel as part of the typical 80,000-pound highway weight limit.
Another important question, he said, is agricultural shipments. Their weight will vary based on the moisture content of the cargo, which is subject to change during loading and shipping.
Whalen said that ocean carriers “typically push all the responsibility down the line to someone else” — like truckers.
The World Shipping Council’s guide explains responsibilities for the weighing process, also without citing a role for truckers who move containers between shippers and vessels.
“The shipper is responsible for providing an accurate ‘verified gross mass’ for each packed container,” the guide states. “The vessel operator and the terminal operator are responsible for using verified gross weights in vessel stow planning and must not load a packed container aboard a vessel for export without a verified gross weight.”
The World Shipping Council, which pressed for container weight rules for more than five years, describes the new standard as an “important factor in ensuring the safe operation of ships. Containers that are overweight . . . create safety concerns for the ship, its crew, other cargo on board and the workers in the port facilities handling the cargo.”
Whalen also detected a “haughty attitude” among ocean carriers: “Our history in dealing with these steamship line and port people is that it is never easy for us. If someone gets stuck waiting, it’s the trucker. That doesn’t make our day any easier.”
