This peak season forwarders are facing a two-fold capacity challenge for cargo headed to North America. Besides tight lift out of Asia, particularly on key corridors like Shanghai-Los Angeles, they also have to contend with a tight trucking market in the US to get imports to their final destination.

Trucking capacity has been notoriously tight, owing to the shortage of drivers, which is not showing any signs of letting up. With the US economy in expansion mode, this has produced a scramble for trucking capacity, with repercussions for other modes like air cargo. Trucking to and from airports has become more challenging, not to mention a lot more expensive. One operator reported paying almost three times the normal rate for an urgent shipment earlier this year.

The challenges for freight forwarders and airlines have been exacerbated by the electronic logging device (ELD) mandate in the US. According to some air cargo players, this has led to more delays and is affecting availability of trucks serving some gateways.

Ron Buschman, managing director of charter broker-cum-GSA Aerodyne Cargo Services, reported a marked increase in delays compared to previous years. He said that trucking providers have blamed this on the ELD mandate, which forces them to stop when they have reached the maximum permitted driving time for the day.

In the past truckers felt they had more flexibility. A common practice was to deduct time spent sitting in traffic jams to stretch working hours. The electronic devices leave no margin for such adjustments and require the driver to stop, even if the destination is relatively near.

This has prompted trucking companies to decline some moves where the distance involved may be pushing the envelope in terms of transit time, lest their trucks have to spend an extra day on the road.

For perishables growers in the Pacific Northwest, the ELD rule has brought challenges getting crops like cherries to international gateways like San Francisco. The ELD regime has created a more restrictive truck market, noted Chris Connell, senior vice-president, perishables, North America at Commodity Forwarders.

Operators in Canada are also feeling the effect. Due to limited direct freighter capacity into the country, forwarders who require maindeck lift often route this cargo over US gateways like New York or Chicago, which means a trucking leg across the border.

“We’re seeing challenges on the trucking side. The US has been a traditional secondary outlet for us with maindeck cargo,” said Gary Vince, head of air freight, Canada at DHL Global Forwarding. “Lack of trucking capacity from New York and Chicago is impacting service and availability of trucks.”

For Canadian exports this has also produced some curious results. Airline Services International (ASI) markets the capacity of a large Latin American carrier. The airline’s freighters do not fly to Canada, so the GSA funnels Canadian exports to its US gateways, New York and Miami. With trucking capacity affected and rates up significantly, ASI has faced stiff competition from European carriers offering aggressive pricing for Canada-Latin America shipments routed over their home bases, which involves twice crossing the Atlantic.

Bob Imbriani, executive vice-president international at forwarder Team Worldwide, commented that the ELD as such has not brought about any fundamental change, as it did not usher in any novel restrictions. However, in conjunction with the driver shortage, it has brought about delays and shortages of available vehicles, and it has prompted trucking firms to adjust routes. As a result, it has become more challenging to feed traffic to some airports.

In theory truckers could resolve the issue of potentially facing an extra day in transit time by assigning a second driver to such a route. However, in light of the scarcity of drivers, this is not a very attractive proposition, he reflected.

By Ian Putzger

Air Freight Correspondent | Toronto