The top concern of international cargo shippers and maritime officials in the United States remains slow freight movement through container ports. The spring resolution of contract differences between longshoremen and management that bogged down work at West Coast ports for months was a welcome relief. But the underlying congestion issues plaguing major ports have not gone away.

Growing import volumes and bigger vessels unloading more containers at once, coupled with seasonal shortages of dockworkers, infrastructure not designed for big vessels, small cranes, outdated truck gate and yard designs, and peak season cargo surges have contributed to the congestion problems at several ports on both coasts.

Several port authorities are working with terminal operators and users to develop reforms aimed at smoothing waterside and landside operations. At the heart of those efforts is a realization that the port sector must change antiquated processes for unloading, storing, tracking and retrieving cargo for transfer between vessels, trucks and trains.

Perhaps the single greatest anachronism of the domestic container industry is a drayage model based on the random arrival of shuttle trucks at container yards looking to pick up a specific import box for a commercial customer. The result is a lot of time-consuming restacking of containers—while the driver waits—to find the one that can be dropped on the truck chassis for delivery to a distribution center or nearby rail yard.

A promising new concept being tried at several ports, however, is significantly increasing efficiency by segregating containers in large blocks for certain high-volume truck destinations. These “free-flow” programs—so called because they operate on the principle that trucks without specific assignments pull into line and simply take the next box off the top of the stack—have sprouted up at the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, New York and New Jersey, and Virginia.

Operational challenges and market realities have limited its adoption, so far. But a new Uber-like technology platform being rolled out in Los Angeles could facilitate truck transactions and make free flow the new standard for evacuating container yards.

Under the current system, terminals unload containers from arriving ships and put them into piles in the order they come off the ship. When trucks arrive and request a specific container, it has to be located and dug out of a stack that can be four or five containers high and six deep. Container-handling machines, like rubber-tired gantry cranes (RTG), move an average of three containers to deliver the correct one to a waiting truck. As a result, one RTG delivers an average of six to eight containers per hour.

Free flow, also referred to as “peel off,” is not a panacea for port productivity, but is a tool that can help shippers get their cargo faster and keep terminals more fluid. Using the free-flow process, a top-handler crane can deliver 25 to 30 containers per hour. Truckers like the system because less waiting boosts the number of trips, and money, they can make in a work day.

Free flow requires grouping large numbers of containers because terminals don’t have the resources and time to sort dozens of small piles. Terminals that offer free flow tend to do so for large shippers—such as Target, Home Depot and Walmart—with sufficient volume to gain the necessary efficiencies and justify setting aside valuable yard space for their containers. The shippers typically—but not always—have a dedicated shuttle-truck provider. Facilities in Los Angeles and Long Beach, for example, have a threshold of 80 to 100 containers for a common cargo owner. Motor carriers hired by the cargo owner are then able to pick up the nearest container from the pile and shuttle it to the destination warehouse.

Importers can typically evacuate their shipping boxes in a day compared to several days with traditional handling methods, according to freight executives.

Instead of entering the terminal with a pre-determined pick-up order, the driver accepts any container and then contacts the dispatch office with the container number to find out the matching customer and delivery instructions.

Maritime industry officials say free flow takes a great deal of coordination between shippers, carriers, terminal operators and truckers to make sure there is enough volume and proper execution. On the front-end, ocean carriers must share stow plans while a vessel is at sea, so ground facilities can set up their yard operations with the right amount of equipment and manpower to facilitate sorting. Before vessel arrival, motor carriers also need to provide the terminal with the list of containers they need segregated.

Some terminals have gone a step further by pooling containers for large motor carriers.

Total Transportation Services Inc. of Rancho Dominguez, Calif., one of the largest port trucking companies in Southern California, for example, asks several terminals at Los Angeles and Long Beach to consolidate its customers’ ocean boxes in a separate stack, when possible.

“It’s extremely efficient and improves the turn times dramatically,” Vic La Rosa, chief executive officer and co-founder, said.

The carrier generally gets at least one “peel-off” stack a week from one of the terminals, but overall volume moved through the program is still light, he said.

TTSI will take the boxes directly to customers with facilities located less than 20 miles from the port. When distribution centers are located further inland, the drayage company will relay boxes at a 17-acre depot operated by Pasha Stevedoring & Terminals on behalf of the Port of Los Angeles. The nearby facility can stage up to 500 containers, allowing drivers to shuttle back and forth to crowded marine terminals while others can utilize off-peak hours to grab containers for longer-distance hauls. TTSI leased 250 chassis to ensure containers are on wheels and ready to deliver in less than 48 hours.

Truck drivers can now get five to seven revenue-loads a day between terminals and the near-dock, peel-off facility, Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said.

Free flow works best in conjunction with an off-dock holding yard, according to port industry professionals. Having a group of trucks cycle back and forth between a nearby container yard and the terminal greatly enhances productivity, because fewer are cramming into a congested port environment. The containers are stored on wheeled chassis for easy pick-up by a second group of truckers, who shuttle between the holding yard and warehouses further inland.

“That’s how we operate. We pull out of the terminal to our yard and then to a secondary location,” said Michael Johnson, an active member of the Harbor Trucking Association in Southern California, who didn’t want his company’s name used in this story.

“We need to see trucking companies play a larger role in taking cargo from terminals en mass, acting as a wholesaler and parceling it out to their customers as they need it, rather than having it jam up the terminals. They can take it to a third-party location or to their own yards if the beneficial cargo owner is not ready for delivery. The terminals are designed to be transit facilities, not warehouses,” John DiBernardo, an SSA Marine vice president in Long Beach, said.

Seattle-based SSA Marine, one of the largest private port operators in the United States, was an earlier pioneer of free flow years ago at its terminals along the West Coast.

The company generally prefers an importer have 100 to 200 containers to segregate into a block, but the minimum requirement depends on how much space is available. SSA’s terminal at the Port of Oakland, for example, is able to do free flow with quantities of less than 50 containers, DiBernardo said.

Most beneficial cargo owners and their preferred truckers without minimum quantities fought the idea of combining their ocean boxes in a stack with those of other shippers, because they couldn’t bear the thought of not controlling the cargo.

“They did not want another trucker to touch their container,” he said. “But now, as trucking companies get bigger they realize that it is more efficient” and are beginning to change their minds, especially as web-based applications for synchronizing cargo moves and creating a critical mass become available.

Earlier this year, APM Terminals in Port Newark, N.J., began operating a “hot stack”—or fast serve pile—for some large volume customers, according to truck and ocean carrier sources.

The combination of a “hot stack” and a special truck gate has allowed drivers to turn a container in 35 minutes, compared to more than 2.5 hours during normal times, Ken Kellaway, CEO of RoadOne Intermodal, said in an e-mail.

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