ISRI CONVENTION 2015: Life in the slow lane

Among the biggest challenges facing scrap processors in the next several years might be shipping their scrap to its destination. Presenters at a session at the 2015 Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. (ISRI) Annual Convention, held in April in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, portrayed several shortcomings within North America’s transportation infrastructure.

 

Joseph Bonney of the Journal of Commerce (JOC) and co-author of a book on container shipping called The Box That Changed the World, said 21 of the JOC’s 2013 top 100 export shippers from the United States were “primarily scrap products exporters,” including 15 scrap paper shippers and six scrap metal companies.

 

Scrap products “are a big part of the cargo mix,” said Bonney, and as such the industry is greatly affected by recent events such as the Pacific Coast work slowdowns. That labor-management confrontation “has been a mess,” said Bonney, creating long lines of trucks and late shipments. “They are starting to dig their way out of it now, but it has been a tough slog,” he remarked.

 

With trade volumes “back to pre-recession levels,” according to Bonney, exporters are looking for other options, but also are encountering up to two-mile-long lines of trucks in New York and New Jersey and, in many cases, may run into high costs to ship over-the-road or by rail to get containers to Virginia or to Savannah, Georgia.

 

Things may only get worse, said Bonney, because freight companies “are having trouble finding drivers [who] want to wait in these long lines.”

 

On the waterfront, ocean shipping companies have introduced larger container ships, but there are currently no U.S. ports that can accept the largest ships. “Infrastructure in the U.S. hasn’t kept pace,” Bonney declared. 

 

Mark Mallory of St. Louis-based scrap company Metal Exchange Corp. said his company has “seen the good, the bad and the ugly of infrastructure.”

 

He said the clogged ports and driver shortage “is not a short-term issue caused by the [West Coast] labor strife; it is a long-term threat.” Investing in infrastructure, however, is “not politically popular” with taxpayers, Mallory commented.

 

Mallory urged ISRI to work with other organizations and “make it a priority [to] develop a port strategy.” Mallory urged ISRI members to get involved, saying, “There is power in numbers. The Federal Maritime Commission is looking for feedback from people who feel they have been harmed by demurrage charges and West Coast delays.”

 

Regarding truck drivers, Mallory said the current shortage in in the U.S. is estimated at 35,000 to 40,000 drivers. However, by 2022 one study has estimated that number will swell to 239,000 drivers.

 

The 2015 ISRI Convention & Exposition was at the Vancouver Convention Centre April 21-25.