Appointments-system outage at Oakland, L.A. container terminals risks demurrage fee pileup
According to an advisory from the operations team at the TraPac terminal at the Port of Oakland, an outage affecting its eModal appointments scheduling system Tuesday and parts of Wednesday “has been resolved” as of roughly midday Wednesday, Sept. 9.
The outage also impacted container haulers at TraPac’s Los Angeles-area terminal, according to AB Trucking small fleet owner Bill Aboudi, his fleet working out of Oakland.
With the Labor Day holiday and Tuesday and Wednesday outages, he worried AB and an untold number of other carriers unable to schedule required appointments those days might soon start incurring demurrage fees.
“The ship lines need to adjust their demurrage days” accounting, he said, typically two-day grace periods for refrigerated and four for dry, to reflect the outage, yet he’s gotten no clear indication that’s happening. “I have a customer who can only accept two containers a day” and six still sat backlogged in the Oakland terminal shortly after the appointments system came back online yesterday.
Consider it yet another example of financial impacts that can flow from system glitches when effective support/back-up contingencies aren’t in place, Aboudi and other watchers suggested.
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Aboudi suspected an eModal update over the long weekend caused a glitch and outage, something that’s certainly not unprecedented, he noted. “Most terminals will bypass it” when that happens to do things the old-fashioned way fairly effectively.
But appointments with TraPac remained inaccessible all day Tuesday, he said, and Wednesday morning. “We’ve lost two days. Now it’s going to be really jammed up” with container haulers trying to catch up.
TraPac’s Wednesday advisory to eModal appointments users directed carriers to “log out of eModal and log back in, then secure your import delivery appointments.”
TraPac reps did not respond to Overdrive questions in time for this story.
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Oregon wildfire HOS relief extended
Motor carriers and truck drivers providing emergency relief to the ongoing wildfire emergency in Oregon are getting an extra month of hours-of-service relief.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued an extension of the waiver that has been in effect since mid-June. Previous extensions were issued on June 26, July 13, and Aug. 11.
Due to ongoing active wildfires, Oregon requested another extension on Sept. 2. FMCSA agreed, noting that emergency conditions have not abated. The extension is valid through Oct. 11 or until the end of the emergency, whichever is sooner.
Under the emergency declaration, motor carriers and drivers providing direct assistance to the emergency in the State of Oregon related to wildfire suppression are granted emergency relief from 49 CFR § 395.3, maximum driving time for property-carrying vehicles.
The HOS relief applies regardless of the origin of the trip, so long as the carrier or driver is providing direct assistance to the emergency in Oregon.
Direct assistance does not include hauls related to long-term rehabilitation of damaged physical infrastructure after the initial threat to life and property has passed, nor does it include routine commercial deliveries, including mixed loads with a nominal quantity of qualifying emergency relief added to obtain the benefits of the waiver.
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FMCSA works with NY inspectors to park 20 trucks, 23 drivers
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration inspectors recently joined forces with the New York State Department of Transportation and New York State Police for a targeted commercial vehicle enforcement effort along I-81.
During the effort, officials conducted inspections on 363 commercial vehicles, resulting in 23 drivers and 20 trucks being placed out-of-service.
“Every unsafe driver or vehicle identified and removed from service is one less risk to the commercial motor vehicle industry and everyone traveling on American roads,” FMCSA said in a Facebook post announcing the results.
FMCSA didn’t share particular violations found during the I-81 detail, but New York inspectors are known for particularly outsize focus on lights and load securement among categories tracked by Overdrive and RigDig in the CSA’s Data Trail rankings. New York ranks No. 10 among states with the most intense lights focus, and just outside the top ten for securement violations.
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Fleet fined $33K for violating hazmat cleanup regs
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) has assessed a $33,000 penalty to Keystone Transportation, Inc., for violating state cleanup regulations following an accident and diesel fuel spill on Route 56 in Leicester.
According to MassDEP, Keystone Transportation failed to take action to respond to a release of diesel fuel from its company vehicle involved in an accident. After the initial spill assessment and cleanup, MassDEP required the company to hire a Licensed Site Professional and, if needed, conduct additional assessment and cleanup, which they reportedly did not complete.
“Urgent circumstances may warrant initial state-funded cleanup to curb further release of oil or hazardous material, but it does not excuse a responsible party from completing all necessary assessment and cleanup,” said John Beling, director of MassDEP’s Central Regional Office in Worcester. “Failure to take required action may result in enforcement action, including possible fines, penalties and orders.”
In addition to paying the $33,000 penalty, Keystone Transportation was ordered to hire a Licensed Site Professional and submit required documents to MassDEP for the assessment and cleanup of the site.
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