This has become a big part of large fleet
analysis or even large fleets that are single units in lots of locations. It’s become very useful for the customer and for the service provider to maximise lower costs in terms of service and make sure they’re getting the utilisation out of the equipment they need so that there’s not excess fleets or equipment that’s not been utilised. That’s been a big change and obviously that’s maximising their spend by adding a small cost to each piece of equipment and reducing the overall fleet, that’s been a big part of the business here. Coming from Europe to the US, (Short
moved to the US 11 years ago from Ireland) I’ve seen a lot of the European technologies moving across to the US and definitely that’s been a big advancement over the last 11 years from my time in the US. In terms of advancements in technology
there’s a lot of optimizations needed before there’s automation, but automation’s the end goal. We see a lot of customers here where optimising and standardising what they’re doing is the next big step before automation. A lot of industries are not just fully suitable for automation at this point because of the technology base isn’t there. The infrastructure in terms of technology isn’t in place in some industries, and that advancement has to come before you can fully automate, for example, a dockside lumber yard or a stevedore. But we do see optimization as key and
that’s something we offer as a service - warehouse optimizations, material flow, warehouse layouts as a free service to help customers maximise what they have at the minute, get it flowing and then from there you can take the next step and in 10- or 15-years’ time to automate it, if the loads are suitable. Optimization is one of the big things
we’ve been doing, coming from Europe where space is at a premium and not very
Combi-CB155E, the shortest 15,000 lbs counterbalance truck in the market.
available, we’re very used to maximising that. To make every square inch count. In the US traditionally there’s been lots of space to use, but that’s becoming less and less as we see across cities now where warehouse space is in high demand. More and more warehouses are being constructed and being close to ports is critical, but you have to maximise that space, and you have to optimise it for the best use. A lot of regulations are happening in
California at the moment, to change a lot of the engine powered equipment to electric, but there are some Federal regulations that are overriding on the diesel side, which California it appears can’t change too much. But the diesel fleet will be the next thing. There are obviously always
improvements to be made on emissions, but the biggest one here is at the end of 2025 to 2026 to phase out operation of Large Spark-Ignited (LSI) forklifts in California, which we expect other ports will follow in time.
The big challenge in California is the
availability of all the charging power, so the infrastructure to charge large fleets of vehicles that are electric, that is going to be a challenge considering in the summertime when it’s very warm we have brownouts
(a drop in the magnitude of voltage in an electrical power system). There’s not a lot of excess power to do this, so the power availability is going to be a question. And I think it’s going to take some time to get all that infrastructure in place. There’s a lot of battery storage systems going in to store solar power and wind and everything but where that peaks at in relation to when they want to have all their over the road trucks electric and so on, will be the key if that infrastructure is in place. The regulation is expected to come in,
in 2035, when they want to have no more sales of gas cars in California. So, the over the road trucks are happening at the minute. If you’re over a fleet of 50, or a company of over 50 people, or over $50 million dollars in revenue, you have to start to have a portion of your truck fleet as electric, so they’re phasing that in as it stands. But we do see challenges with that
where large trucks need immense power to charge five or six battery vehicles overnight. There isn’t the power availability at warehouses or charging stations to charge these large vehicles at the minute, so it’s proven a bit of a challenge, but there are incentives out there for these with the California Government, they’ve got a core programme to encourage it and they are given incentives. We would expect to follow this shortly. The news that former President Biden
was announcing a series of actions to strengthen the cybersecurity of America’s ports and to stop buying Chinese ship-to- shore cranes and to start buying American ones made good headlines. It mostly centred on the two biggest
Combi-CSS (Container Slip Sheet) completes a full container load cycle in under 6 mins.
ports Los Angeles and Long Beach, which were importing everything from Asia. There was a lot of material coming from there to the US for manufacturers. I think there’s a lot of components coming from
Dockside Lift & Move Supplement | October 2024 | xv
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