Afloat Again

It was a small victory but it’s paying major dividends. The group of independent truckers who blocked the gates of the Fairview Cove container terminal in Halifax last month to protest slow turnaround times and cargo congestion are now reaping the benefits of their tough stand.
For several weeks leading up to the blockade, truckers found themselves waiting up to six hours just to get onto the terminal and then spending another hour or two loading cargo and clearing the gate. Congestion on the terminal, which was being blamed on a number of factors, was clogging cargo movement on the dock, and truckers, who handle about 40 per cent of the containers, were being hit hard by the terminal’s inefficiency.
Fed up, the truckers launched a spontaneous protest. And it forced a meeting with Calvin Whidden, vice-president of Cerescorp, the terminal operator. He agreed to open the terminal to a 24-hour operation five days a week and ordered four more front-end loaders, two of which were on the terminal almost immediately.
“It’s been the difference between night and day,” says Brian Conrad, general manager of Conrad’s Transport in Halifax.
Conrad’s company has been hauling from both the Fairview Cove terminal, as well as the port’s other major terminal, Halterm, for several years. He had complained that since April 15 the production levels of his trucks had dropped to somewhere between 25 and 50 per cent at Cerescorp. (He’s basing 100-per-cent productivity on a truck making two trips into the terminal with containers and taking two out before noon, then repeating the performance after noon.)
And, since the port upped its hours of operation and added equipment, production is back to between 75 and 100 per cent.
“I am happy with what I am seeing at Ceres,” Conrad says. “I’m sure he [Whidden] is going to fine-tune it. No one will mind as long as the industry is treated fair.”
The congestion problem at Cerescorp and Halterm actually began last November. Canadian National Railway introduced a new rail-car rationalization program, saying the scheme would make more efficient use of its cars. Prior to the program, ships were unloaded and most of the cargo went directly on to rails and was sent quickly on its way to central Canada and the American Midwest. Trucks brought some export cargo to the terminal and left with imports, and for those trucks, the situation was tolerable, if not great.
But CN’s program did not work as planned. Fierce Atlantic storms and a harsh winter kept ships late. Fewer rail cars meant hundreds of containers got grounded on the terminals. The entire movement of containers bogged down, and containers were backed up, some for as much as a week. In February, CN acknowledged that its rationalization plan wasn’t working and agreed to supply more cars.
In the meantime, a bodycalled the “Smart Port Forum,” which consists of Halifax Port Authority stakeholders, struck a committee to find out what was causing the slowdowns.
Conrad says although the Smart Port Forum hadn’t shown any solid results, it meant that truckers at least had a voice in port management, something that hadn’t happened in the past. The committee visited both the Halifax terminals and in its initial report said that the two main problems were the lack of communication between the terminals and truckers and a lack of equipment to handle loading and unloading.
Those issues became obvious at the Fairview Cove terminal when Atlantic Container Line (ACL) moved its business to that facility from Halterm. ACL, which constituted about 25 per cent of Halterm’s container volume, moves between 60,000 and 70,000 TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) through the port annually.
However, it became evident that Cerescorp wasn’t prepared to handle the extra work when ACL ships began arriving at its dock on April 10. Manpower and equipment were both in short supply. Cerescorp pushed some of the congestion blame onto CN, asserting that the railroad still wasn’t supplying enough rail cars, which CN denies.
Whatever the reason, the port congestion had stevedores complaining because grounding of the boxes meant double-handling and additional costs which would hurt the port’s competitiveness.
The situation also brought strong comment from ACL. The container line, a major customer of the port, stated it was diverting about 10 per cent of its cargo through other ports and would continue to do so until productivity at Fairview improved.
Charles Lewis Jr., a Nova Scotia independent who owns two trucks, both under contract to Armour Transport, and who has been hauling out of the Fairview terminal for the past 15 years, says the congestion was the worst he has ever seen.
The situation at Halterm was poor as well, but congestion eased for the truckers at that terminal weeks ago, mainly because of lost business. In addition to the defection of ACL to Cerescorp, shipping line Maersk Sealand discontinued its North Atlantic service into Halifax in early April, citing economic reasons. That service made up about 7 per cent of Halterm’s annual volume.
George Malec, vice-president of operations for the Halifax Port Authority, says the authority is “very pleased to see Ceres has stepped up to the plate to address the truck situation.” From an authority perspective, he says “this is what the whole Smart Port initiative is all about. It is to get all the key stakeholders and the people who have the assets to communicate effectively and work through any problems or difficulties toward creative solutions.”