A6
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, JANUARY 4, 2022
Shipping: Logjam at ports will likely persist well into 2022
Continued from Page A1
agricultural exporters in another way, too.
Once international customers turn elsewhere
for products, Friedmann said U.S. producers
risk losing them forever.
“If we can’t deliver it aff ordably and
dependably, our foreign customers will go
somewhere else,” he said. “The reality is,
there is nothing we produce here in the U.S.
agriculturally ... that can’t be sourced from
somewhere else in the world.”
Experts say the logjam at ports will likely
persist well into 2022, though new legislation
and infrastructure improvements may help to
alleviate the problem.
‘Self-infl icted wounds’
Friedmann said there are several “self-in-
fl icted wounds” that led to the crisis.
Most terminals along the West Coast, he
said, were built to accommodate smaller ships
that carried 7,000 containers at a time. Today’s
largest vessels are almost a quarter-mile long
and carry from 18,000 to more than 22,000
containers.
“There’s no place to store this stuff when
it gets off (the ship),” Friedmann said. That’s
especially true in cities where the docks are
surrounded by busy downtown areas.
Friedmann said the U.S. also has some
of the lowest allowable truck weights in the
world, with California interstate highways
capped at 80,000 pounds gross weight. Instead
of hauling loads in one or two truckloads, he
said it takes two or three, contributing to the
shortage of chassis and drivers.
The American Trucking Associations esti-
mated the driver shortage would hit a record
high of more than 80,000 drivers by the end
of the year.
Although these problems had been fester-
ing in the U.S. for decades, Friedmann said,
the coronavirus pandemic brought them to a
head in 2020.
COVID-19 caused shutdowns at ports
and factories in China, which limited the pro-
duction and movement of products. Mean-
while, more Americans were stuck at home
and shopping online, amping up demand for
imported consumer products.
That created the perfect recipe for delays.
In November , a record 111 container ships
were anchored off the Southern California
coast, waiting to dock and unload their cargo.
“It’s complete confusion,” Friedmann said,
adding that carrier service schedules have
become “completely undependable.”
In a recent survey, Agriculture Transporta-
tion Coalition members reported losing 22% of
their export sales due to supply chain problems.
‘Shipping fatigue’
At BOSSCO Trading, Jacobson, the inter-
national sales manager, and Shelly Boshart
Davis, vice president of international sales,
say they are left exhausted.
“There’s this shipping fatigue that’s really
starting to set in,” said Boshart Davis, who
also serves as a Republican representative in
the Oregon Legislature. “We pride ourselves
on being fl exible, but it feels like we’re putting
out fi res every day, every hour, all the time.”
BOSSCO Trading markets straw from
about 40 grass seed farms around the Willa-
mette Valley.
Once the seed crop is harvested, BOSS-
CO’s crews arrive to rake and bale the left-
over straw, which then goes to a hay press
in Salem. The bales are loaded into shipping
containers and sent to ports in Seattle, Tacoma
and Portland via truck and rail.
Port of Seattle
The CMA-CGM Benjamin Franklin arrives in Elliott Bay and prepares to dock at the Port of Seattle.
Normally, BOSSCO Trading handles
2,200 containers in a year. However, Jacob-
son said it is becoming harder to fi nd con-
tainers, as they are stuck on ships or at docks.
Bookings from some carriers have also been
canceled for months — called “vessel voids”
— leaving products stranded.
Boshart Davis estimates their costs are up
100% to 150% between increased rates and
fees, to say nothing of the mental and emo-
tional toll.
“When you can’t be productive and effi -
cient ... it costs a lot of money when you’re
scrambling all the time,” she said.
Todd Fryhover, the president of the Wash-
ington Apple Commission, said his members
are under similar pressure.
Apples are Washington’s most valuable
agricultural commodity, with $2.1 billion in
sales in 2020. About 30% of the state’s pro-
duction is exported, though Fryhover said
port congestion has producers concentrating
this year more on North American markets as
opposed to overseas.
But that also has a cost. For every 1 mil-
lion boxes of fresh apples shifted into the
U.S. domestic market, the price drops about
50 cents per box as supply begins to overtake
demand, Fryhover said.
“The entire supply chain as been aff ected,”
he said. “It’s not easy to point at one place and
say, ‘Fix this and everything will be better.’
That’s certainly not the case.”
Increasing capacity
The vast majority of marine cargo in the
Northwest is handled by the ports of Seattle
and Tacoma, governed by the Northwest Sea-
port Alliance. It is the fi fth-busiest container
gateway in the U.S., behind the ports of Los
Angeles, Long Beach, New York-New Jersey
and Savannah, Georgia .
Tom Bellerud, the chief operations offi cer
for the seaport alliance, said agriculture is a
dominant exporter in the region.
Congestion has certainly hampered the
Seattle-Tacoma gateway, Bellerud said,
though he sees signs that pressure may be let-
ting up somewhat. The number of ships that
were once backed up in Seattle — albeit not
as extreme as Southern California — is now
Sirens: Clatsop County is the
highest hazard county for tsunamis
Continued from Page A1
While the city has shown some interest in
taking over responsibility, there are still a lot
of logistics to work out.
Is it feasible? And what will it cost resi-
dents to upgrade and maintain the system?
Those are some of the questions Rick Hud-
son, the city’s emergency manager, has before
the City Council considers taking on the role.
There are fi ve tsunami siren towers in the
city’s jurisdiction, and while tsunami’s are
rare — the last one in Cannon Beach was
in 1964 — Hudson said the sirens can save
lives .
If the city decides to take ownership of the
sirens, Hudson said he would work to mod-
ernize the system by linking it to a dispatch
center and creating a management and fi nan-
cial plan so it doesn’t become a burden.
If a tsunami is expected after a distant
earthquake, there is usually two to four hours
to evacuate, Hudson said, and the sirens can
be a way of getting residents and tourists to
pay attention and respond.
While there are other methods of notify-
ing people, including wireless emergency
signals that are used to put out Amber Alerts
and local notifi cation systems like Clatsop
Alerts, a siren can notify people on the beach
who decided to leave their phone in the car
or at home.
“For me, personally, I’d hate to get rid of
something that really does fi ll a gap in the
worst-case scenario when nobody has mod-
ern technology around,” Hudson said.
Tiff any Brown, Clatsop C ounty’s director
of emergency management, agrees the sirens
play an important role. She said the situation in
Cannon Beach is not a new story.
C oastal communities in Oregon began
implementing sirens after Washington state
decided to adopt and manage a siren system
for the coast, she said.
But after some time, an exodus began, she
explained, because the sirens were too costly
to maintain and manage . Some communities
that kept the sirens have seen the systems fall
into disrepair, she said, and once other noti-
fi cation systems came into play, it furthered
the argument by some to remove the towers.
Brown noted that Clatsop County is one of
the few counties in Oregon still maintaining
sirens because of its status as the highest haz-
ard county for tsunamis .
In addition to the sirens in Cannon Beach
and Arch Cape, there are sirens in Seaside
and Gearhart, which are managed by Sea-
side. Warrenton is working to get the parts to
install two sirens.
“I’m very proud that in Clatsop County
we have so many communities with sirens,”
Brown said. But, she added, “there’s no dis-
puting that we’d be more resilient if it were
a single system that was managed in a more
comprehensive way.”
the lowest it has been “in a very long time,”
he said.
Bellerud credited a few factors that have
helped to relieve the bottlenecks.
First, he said both Seattle and Tacoma are
utilizing alternative container yards, freeing
up valuable space on the terminal docks and
allowing products to move more effi ciently.
The Port of Seattle identifi ed an additional 40
acres at Terminal 46, and the Port of Tacoma
opened an additional 20-acre yard.
“We have the luxury of having some addi-
tional land and space near our terminals that
can off er greater utility to the overall opera-
tions,” Bellerud said.
The biggest upgrade, however, will be the
reopening of Terminal 5 in Seattle, Bellerud
said.
The 185-acre terminal has been under con-
struction for several years. It is slated to go
into service in phases beginning in January,
with more than $500 million in improvements.
“That will open some space and relieve
some congestion at Terminal 18,” Bellerud
said.
Bellerud said he is not aware of any other
major port operation bringing this much new
capacity to the marketplace.
“We’re very proud of that,” he said.
New legislation
Solving the supply chain crisis is expected
to take time, but agricultural groups are
encouraged by a bill they say will crack down
on shipping lines’ unreasonable practices and
improve transparency for exporters.
The Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2021
passed the U.S. House of Representatives
with bipartisan support in early December .
Lawmakers have said the bill will ensure
maritime shipping remains competitive,
reciprocal and protect businesses from price
gouging.
Tracey Chow, federal government aff airs
specialist for Western Growers, said the bill
is not a silver bullet, but as the shipping cri-
sis eases it will allow the industry to ensure a
level playing fi eld for agricultural exporters.
“We want the commerce system to work
for both sides,” Chow said.
For example, Western Growers — which
OREGON CAPITAL
INSIDER
represents vegetable, fruit and tree nut
farms in California, Arizona, Colorado and
New Mexico — has called out the practice
of ocean carriers sending empty containers
directly back to Asia instead of sending them
inland to be loaded with agricultural goods
for export.
Carriers are able to charge upward of
$20,000 per container for imports from Asia,
enticing them to skip agricultural exports
altogether.
“From a business perspective, it’s hard to
compete with that,” Chow said. “You can’t
just keep bringing in imports and not have
reciprocity for exports to leave.”
The Ocean Shipping Reform Act would
prohibit carriers from declining U.S. exports
“unreasonably,” as determined by the Federal
Maritime Commission.
It would also require common carriers to
report to the commission total import and
export tonnage, and loaded versus empty
containers per vessel each quarter.
To incentivize effi ciency, Chow said ocean
carriers and ports may charge what are known
as detention and demurrage fees if containers
are not unloaded or returned quickly. The fees
can be as much as $500 per day per container.
But with congestion at the ports, Chow
said exporters may not have the fl exibility to
avoid getting hit with penalties.
It is typically up to the invoiced party to
dispute whether these charges are reasonable.
The bill would shift that burden of proof to
the ocean carrier.
“(This crisis) has brought attention to how
imbalanced the maritime shipping indus-
try is becoming,” Chow said. “Everybody
understands this is an issue that needs to be
addressed.”
Looking ahead, Friedmann, with the trans-
portation coalition, said the crisis at ports
could drag into 2023 before ocean carriers
can provide more ships and containers and
demand for imported consumer goods starts
to abate.
“As long as people are staying home
and buying these huge volumes of imported
goods, and everything we own and play with
is made overseas, this is going to continue,”
he said.
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