“Hanjin ups fees for delays at US ports” was the way BUSINESS TIMES began a July 13th Bloomberg article, and the reasons given for those increases went straight to the heart of the matter:

“(Seoul) In an early sign that shipping lines expect US West Coast ports to be congested as the peak season approaches, South Korea’s largest shipping line, Hanjin Shipping, plans to raise demurrage charges on customers who delay in picking up their cargo from US ports.

“Hanjin will charge, from Aug.1, US $ 100 for every container a day detained at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach for four days after a five-day grace period. The so-called demurrage fee will increase to US $ 150 daily a box from the fifth day. The current fee is a fixed US $ 100 per container daily after the grace period …

“Shipping lines may face congestion at the ports of Los Angeles, the busiest US port, and at Long Beach as more goods are moved before the Christmas season. An increasing number of lines have shifted to ports in other cities, including Seattle, to avoid bottlenecks …

“Container shipping companies face rising costs as record oil prices are prompting truckers and railways in the US to increase charges. They are also struggling from an increase in capacity as a record number of vessels from Asian shipyards are delivered this year …

“Shipping lines typically pass on part of the fuel, port fees and other expenses to their clients through surcharges …

“Hanjin and 10 other container lines which form the Transpacific Stabilization Agreement also impose surcharges to move boxes in the US by trucks and railways …”

It didn’t take a careful reading of that article to arrive at a clear understanding of the problems that have been developing over the past ten years or so. The biggest problem, of course, is that officials throughout the intermodal supply chain are dealing with effects rather than causes. For example, Hanjin already anticipates the congestion caused by containers “detained” at the LA/Long Beach complex, but instead of making an effort to determine the reason for these delays, they simply increase the surcharges .. as though that slap on the wrist would motivate “customers” to shift into a higher gear. These “customers” know what to do with that surcharge … like all other penalty fees, that cost for the pickup delay is simply passed on to the unwary end user, the consumer/taxpayer.

We’ve said repeatedly that the installation of our space-saving, cost effective, storage and retrieval systems would allow for on-site trucking operations, full-time employment of drivers, and programmed delivery of containers. Delays, congestion and traffic jams would no longer be problems for port communities. And surcharges? They’d be a thing of the past. [They accomplish nothing anyway, because these surcharges are deliberately shifted by those who should be held accountable to those who’ve had nothing to do with the industry’s inexcusable failings.]