By: Staff Writer
May 14, 2021
A US freight service company talks up their recent achievement in Puerto Rico, vowing to cut in/out times by more than 1/3rd and is also remaining encouraged with Puerto Rico and the wider Caribbean.
Mitch Luciano, chief executive officer of Trailer Bridge, a freight service company headquartered in Jacksonville Florida, spoke to Caribbean Magazine Plus about their recent inking of a long term agreement with Puerto Rico Ports Authority (PRPA) and said, “Having a direct relationship with the port will allow us to make improvements to the infrastructure in the yard faster, which will improve flow of containers and ease of use for our customers.”
The deal with the PRPA is a 20-year lease agreement for the Army terminal, which culminates in over two years of steady investment from Trailer Bridge into PR in preparation for this time.
Mr Luciano also said about the long term benefits of the deal that: “Trailer Bridge already has the fastest in/out gate time at the port and this will only improve those times. The average container movement out of the port is less than 40 minutes and we will strive to drive that down to less than 30 minutes.”
The turnaround time is record breaking for anywhere in the world as in 2019, dry container ships spent an average of around 0.69 days in port during a port call. Container ships spent the least amount of time at Japanese ports, a median time of 0.35 days. Australia ranked last, taking a median time of 1.18 days to load and unload containers from ships at its ports.
Mr Luciano also said: “We are encouraged by the activity to/from Puerto Rico and the rest of the Caribbean. There was an outlook of a possible decline due to COVID-19, though we have seen the opposite and remain optimistic that this will continue.
“For the Caribbean market specifically we have not seen a direct impact from the Suez Canal issue, though would expect some indirect impacts in the coming month or two. Shouldn’t have too much of a bearing on the operations of the US based ocean carriers.”
Trailer Bridge also has a presence in the Dominican Republic, but has offered no indication that it has any immediate plans to spread quickly through any other Caribbean island.
Most recent issues with containers being stuck in China, slowing down US shipping, is not an issue for Trailer Bridge as Mr Luciano said, “Since we own our own container and chassis fleet we have not seen this impact our operations at all. We do understand that several of our clients are seeing the impact with direct shipments from Asia and we are making every attempt to support them through sourcing goods via the US and utilizing our service and equipment.