CHARLESTON, SC  South Carolina Ports Authority president and CEO Jim Newsome has issued the following statement on the proposed new chassis pool structure to be known as the Southern States Chassis Pool:

“The South Atlantic Chassis Pool was formed in 2006 as a way to more efficiently handle the provision of chassis for the movement of containers in the Southeast. Today, this pool provides about 40 percent of the chassis offered in CCM managed pools.

While this pool has historically been an effective solution to chassis provision, the current fleet is both aging and has not kept up in size with the growth of containerized trade in the Southeast. Additionally, chassis provision is increasingly fragmented in the market as about 40 percent of the container moves are handled by chassis provided outside of the pool structure.

The Georgia Ports Authority and the South Carolina Ports Authority have filed an agreement with the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) to work jointly to provide a new chassis pool structure to be known as the Southern States Chassis Pool. This pool will be operated by the North American Chassis Pool Cooperative (NACPC) which is a trucker-centric organization that has focused from its inception on improving the quality of chassis on an at-cost basis.

There are three major goals in this collective effort:

• Significantly improve the quality of the chassis fleet in the Southeast through setting standards in terms of age and attributes, such as radial tires, LED lights, and anti-lock brakes.
  
• Grow the size of the chassis pool to keep up with the explosive growth in containerized trade in the Southeast, both in terms of number of chassis and more realistic trigger levels for the injection of new chassis.
  
• Provide an “at cost” model per day of use which removes the current economic discontinuities which apparently exist between the various segments in the market that use chassis services.
  

Efficient chassis provision is central to the continued growth of Southeast ports. We are eagerly anticipating this agreement becoming effective and beginning the much needed work to improve the South Atlantic chassis fleet.”

The agreement is available on the FMC website. SCPA encourages stakeholders to file comments with the FMC during the 12-day comment period to share their views of the existing chassis system as well as the proposed changes under the Southern States Chassis Pool. Comments may be emailed to [email protected] with “Southern States Chassis Agreement, Agreement 201262” in the subject line.