The intermodal system in the United States is a puzzling puzzle. Pardon the redundancy, but the old ways of dispersing critical information to concerned parties for checking container status and beyond has had a missing puzzle piece...until now.
The marine terminal is, of course, the epicenter for containerized cargo. Addressing this often-congested flow by electronically connecting container information to all concerned parties has become one company's primary marketing push.
In the January 2000 issue of Marine Digest, a Q & A with Jon Hemingway, president, Stevedoring Services of America (SSA), revealed the name of a new Internet-based container terminal information service called eModal. Hemingway mentioned the fledgling company when asked about methods of reducing trucker wait-time at container terminals.
It has since grown beyond its fledgling stage.
The brainchild of John Cushing, former Port of Los Angeles intermodal marketing manager, eModal has signed up 19 major West Coast container terminals thus far ‹ from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest. The company says East Coast contracts are also pending.
"We'll be on all coasts by the end of the year," Cushing told Marine Digest.
The eModal website is currently running through Tidework's (SSA's IT subsidiary) servers, and the site's design is courtesy of noted Seattle/London-based web designer, Saltmine Creative (whose client list includes Amazon.com, BP Amoco, Microsoft and General Motors). So it appears eModal's backend and frontend are on track.
As for what's in between, new users to the site can register for free and check an inclusive list of fields pertaining to container availability (over 120,000 containers are currently available for tracking), plus vessel schedules, terminal operating hours, addresses, key contacts, truck driver status and transportation news briefs.
"Our codes and theirs [the terminals] read each other. Every 15 minutes the terminals do a sweep of container status and this information is sent to us instantaneously," said Cushing.
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