Impact of second-tier container port facilities on drayage operation

Background: An increasing number of container and chassis staging, "dray-off", drop yard, and depot facilities are being established outside of North American marine container terminals. The increased use of these "second-tier" facilities implies that there must be some capacity, delivery time, service, or reliability benefit that offset the additional cost and complexity. Methods: This paper builds on the previously developed integrated drayage scheduling model to determine the impact of second-tier port facilities on drayage operation. It modifies the previously developed model by incorporating the following features: (1) trucks do not have to wait at customers' locations during the import unloading and export loading operations; (2) drayage operations can include a drop yard (i.e., second-tier facility) for picking up or/and dropping off loaded containers outside the marine container terminal; and (3) a customer is allowed to request any of the following jobs: pick up an empty container, pick up a loaded container, drop off an empty container, and drop off a loaded container. Results: The results indicated that by moving the location of import pickup and export delivery from inside the marine container terminal to a location outside the terminal, the efficiency of drayage operation could increase. Additionally, when import pickup and export delivery take place inside the marine container terminal, the most efficient location for the chassis yard and empty container depot is inside the terminal. However, when the location of import pickup and/or export delivery are outside the terminal, the most efficient location for the chassis yard and empty container depot is also outside the terminal. Conclusions: The modeling results suggest that in addition to adding reserved capacity for marine terminals or as buffers to reconcile the preferred delivery times of importers, the second-tier facilities could also yield operational savings. However, the potential drayage efficiencies depend heavily on shorter queuing and turn time at these less-complex facilities compared to marine container terminals. Lastly, the modeling results suggest that the observed evolution of North American marine container terminals from self-contained entities into multi-tier systems is likely to continue to add additional capacities to accommodate container trade growth. This finding has important implications for regions and communities concerned over the impact of growing container ports.