APM Terminals Elizabeth was selected by The Association of Bi-State Motor Carriers as terminal of the year.
The 2021 William F. Fallon, Jr. Memorial Award was presented in a ceremony by Tom Heimgartner President and Owner Best Transportation and Chairman of the Association of Bi-State Motor Carriers to Jon Poelma and the Port Elizabeth team. The award is named for Bill Fallon - a popular and respected Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive who perished at age 53 while helping others evacuate the Port Authority offices on the 62nd floor in One World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The award is presented to the terminal which has the most outstanding on-pier intermodal terminal in the port of New York-New Jersey.
Jon Poelma, Managing Director of APM Terminals Elizabeth said “We’re very pleased with this recognition reflecting the success of our $200 million infrastructure investment and our professional labor and colleagues who define our service level every day. Our new gates and appointment system have enabled the trucking industry to serve the region well.”
APM Terminals Elizabeth has worked hard to make the terminal better for truckers, recently completing new infrastructure including new ship-to-shore cranes, modernized IT systems and new truck gates. The terminal upgrade was designed to improve capacity, productivity and customer experience. Building more trucker gates with improved procedures to accelerate turntimes was a central goal of the upgrade. Safety-wise, the terminal has rolled out artificial intelligence to trigger a notification to the Safety team on the terminal to respond to the trucker location when a trucker steps out of the truck. The terminal handles over 5000 truck gate activities daily. APM Terminals Elizabeth has also rolled out an appointment visibility app as well as a mandatory driver induction app to ensure driver safety awareness policies on the terminal.
Mr. Poelma added “We speak to Lisa Yakomin, President of Bi-State Motor Carriers and other Bi-State members frequently to adjust to the ebb and flow of each week’s container flows, weather, holidays, traffic patterns and other supply chain challenges. We encourage all stakeholders in the port to keep the trucker in mind with high service and proactive communication on gates, empty returns and appointments. Bi-State shares monthly statistics on their driver experiences at the terminal and we send out quarterly surveys to our landside customers to gauge performance and satisfaction metrics. Equally important, our professional Labor understands the tight truck driver market and provides the vital service levels to keep the terminal fluid and safe.”
The trucker experience component of logistics is a customer differentiator that has an important supply chain cost and confidence factor to it for logistics planners. This time of year every day is important to cargo flow with the tremendous volumes arriving for the leadup to Christmas. Customers want their cargo in place and ready to move quickly for E-commerce and retail store sales.
Truck gate operations at the terminal continue to be the best in the harbor averaging less than 50 minutes to get in and out of the terminal – thanks to the new in/out gates that use the latest technology that improve gate-in and gate-out procedures.
