Milestone Chassis – Harbor Trucking Association (HTA)
The Backstory
The Harbor Trucking Association (HTA) is a coalition of Los Angeles (LA), Long Beach (LB) and Oakland intermodal carriers whose purpose is to advocate, educate and promote strategies with other goods movement stakeholders and policy makers that will sustain emissions reductions, provide a dialog for intermodal truck efficiency and return cargo and jobs to California ports. The HTA is vital to the nation’s supply chain, as two-thirds of the containers that are imported on the U.S. West Coast come through the Ports of LA/LB and Oakland.
The Challenge
On the West Coast, it comes down to volume: The Ports of LA/LB and Oakland are among the busiest in the world. In fact, the Port of Los Angeles alone imported 9.5 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) in 2018 – the most in its 111-year history. Because of this significant increase in imports over the last 2 years, these ports regularly experience severe congestion.
“[The Port of LA/LB] is the most congested I’ve ever seen,” Weston LaBar, HTA CEO said. “There are a few factors that have contributed to this congestion: labor contract issues, big ships and alliance structures and finally, equipment issues and chassis pools.”
