It’s late November of 2008, more than ten years since we began our efforts to convince port officials that our patented storage, retrieval and delivery systems would lead them out of the dark ages, but nary a response has been heard from the powers-that-be. Now why is that do you suppose?

Reports and press releases are constantly being issued to the maritime community about the good intentions of port authorities and container terminal operators with respect to advanced technology. It’s “high-tech” this and “high-tech that”, all with the expressed intention of increasing the number of moves per-acre-per-year, as well as lowering costs to consumers.

No matter how it’s sliced, it’s still baloney.

Yesterday we read that terminal operators have turned to optical readers, Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID), Global Positioning Satellites (GPS), and anything else, supposedly, that looks like automation.

Those optical devices, or cameras, pick up ID numbers on the truck’s license plate and chassis, and on the container as well, in order to speed up the processing at terminal gates.

The GPS helps when it’s time to locate a container that had been stacked, then moved around because it had impeded operations, and had finally become lost in the shuffle, and the RFID lets gatekeepers know whether or not this or that truck is authorized to enter the terminal. The benefits, according to the report, include operational efficiency and a smoother work flow.

As it plays out, however, all this “high-tech” equipment has cost a barrel of money, and naturally, these costs have been passed down through the supply chain to the consumer … the very ones who were supposed to be beneficiaries of “high-tech’ gimmickry.

The patented container terminal storage, retrieval and delivery system we’ve been advocating needs none of these expensive gadgets. This website’s animated schematics and Problems and Solutions pages make it perfectly clear that our movable carriages require no GPS systems, simply because our programmed and slotted containers never need to be “located”. Being slotted instead of stacked, these containers are not moved until they are retrieved for delivery.

RFID? Forget about it. A distinct advantage of our system is the in-house delivery operation. Terminal gates are not required because of our automated and programmed delivery schedule, and vehicles from outside the port, therefore, play no part in these operations.

No GPS, no RFID, no lumbering gantry cranes, no congested gates, no misplaced containers, no outlandish expenditures of taxpayer/consumer funds? What kind of an operation would that be?

It would be a very efficient, low cost and profitable one.