A Tale of Two Ports: Automation at Oakland vs. Rotterdam

TIL the average salary for port workers is $147k.

The real automation in the Rotterdam port is the Automatic Guided Vehicle system that moves containers between the loading cranes and a container re-arranging system that optimizes the placement of containers dock side.

The loading cranes themselves are only remote control on the deep water side, and this is for health and safety reasons. The cranes for the trains and barges for the hinterland are sit-in cabs.

SOURCE: I did a tour of the terminal a few weeks ago as part of the 6th International Conference on Computational Logistics [1]

A similar AVG system is in place at Hamburg as seen in this video [2]

[1] http://realtimelogistics.info/iccl/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B3PzgYUK_0

TraPac and Middle Harbor in the Port of Los Angeles are automating. Oakland isn't considered big enough to need it.[1] for an overview of automation in Los Angeles ports, see [2]. The Port of Los Angeles isn't a port operator; it's a landlord. Thirteen private companies have their own terminals, docks and equipment, and two of them are automating now. To automate a terminal, you have to take it out of service and build a new one.

The above references may be too specialized for general readers. Here's a "gee whiz" video of Rotterdam port operations.[3] And a tutorial with animations, from the port of Busan, S. Korea.[4]

Note that the article is partly an ad for FlexPort. Automated ports have less need for FlexPort's service. Most automated ports have buffers, big stacks of containers. Containers come off ships and are transferred to container stacks nearby. On the other side of the stacks, trucks approach and have containers loaded onto them. The terminal handles container sorting.

Oakland loads many containers directly from ships to trucks towing container trailers, without buffering. Matching up trucks and containers is a problem. FlexPort's concept is "Uber for containers" (I know, but here it's real.) Any truck, any container, any destination within some distance limit.

If Oakland had automated container stack buffers, FlexPort wouldn't be needed.

[1] [http://www.joc.com/port-news/port-productivity/us-ports-weig...] [2] https://www.portoflosangeles.org/Board/2014/April/042014_ite... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxXZQ7emHC0 [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t2cqiQl0BE

This article tells you basically nothing if you're not already convinced that more automation is always better, or that while "technological disruption... almost inevitably leads to displacement of some segments of the workforce. In the long run, however, technology ends up creating better jobs and expanded opportunities across broad spectrums of the economy."

The calculation that "proves" Rotterdam is more efficient is based on the unargued and generally false assumption that both ports are operating at full capacity - the author just divides TEUs by number of cranes. TEUs handled per year in Oakland only just matched their 2006 peak after falling drastically during the Great Recession: http://www.portofoakland.com/maritime/containerstats.aspx

And Oakland's main capacity limitation actually seems to be congestion getting containers out of the Port: http://www.wsj.com/articles/oakland-port-proposes-trucking-f...

While the unions are arguably stronger on the US East Cost the International Longshore and Warehouse Union at the Oakland terminal certainly isn't a pushover.