Marine shipping containers are designed to be "intermodal", meaning that they move from one mode of transportation to another: from a ship to a truck to a railroad. To move a container by truck it must be placed on an intermodal chassis, which is nothing more than a frame with wheels that is, in turn, attached to a trucker's rig or power unit.

In the United States, unlike the rest of the world, harbor truckers do not own chassis. Instead, they are owned by pools of Ocean Carrier companies and marine terminals that provide them to truckers for short periods of time in order to move the containers of that ocean carrier. There is no national chassis pool.

The U.S. business model creates inefficiencies in two key ways. First, harbor truckers must make additional trips around the harbor to drop off and secure chassis. This limits the number of trips a trucker can make in a day with concomitant negative impacts on traffic, air pollution and trucker economics. Second, chassis storage takes up valuable land resources at the nation's ports that could be better used for cargo containers.

There are two possible solutions: adopt the European model where truckers own the chassis or, alternatively, develop regional and national pools. While it may be that ultimately the Untied States needs to follow the model of other countries, over the short-term requiring truckers to own their own chassis will put even more economic burdens on a trucking industry that has significant economic problems. A better solution over the short term is to develop regional chassis pools.
During 2004, the Virginia Port Authority's operating company, Virginia International Terminals, Inc., successfully implemented a port-wide chassis pool. The chassis pool relieves shipping lines of having to maintain, repair and keep track of equipment, and accelerates the pick-up and delivery of containers, improving trucker turn times per day. The chassis pool also standardizes and improves the quality of chassis available at the terminals, including standardizing the quality of maintenance and repair. It has lowered the cost of chassis use at the terminal, users are charged for the use of chassis based only on the cost of operating the chassis pool.

We believe the Virginia model should be attempted at other, larger and more complex ports and in other regions. The development of port-wide and regional chassis pools ought to be one of the highest priorities for carriers and terminal operators, with a view toward creating a single, national chassis pool.

Click the links below to learn more about the chassis pools currently in operation:

• Ocean Carriers Equipment Management Association
• Consolidated Chassis Management, Llc