The largest container terminal in America, Long Beach Container Terminal Inc (LBCT) has officially developed “Application Programming Interfaces” (APIs) to improve upon the Terminal’s ease of doing business with the truck drayage community at large.
LBCT is the first Marine Terminal Operator (MTO) at either the Port of Los Angeles or Long Beach to provide an API solution as a modern interface for trucking companies to integrate with their terminal operator partners, said LBCT President Anthony Otto.
According to a press release, this new platform allows for the efficient and even flow of data between trucking companies and the MTOs, which is key to the company’s overall strategic goals.
It provides the ability for drayage companies to meet the high demands of its BCO customers while simultaneously enabling LBCT to consistently process trucks with the harbor’s shortest truck turn times. Since the opening of its new facility, LBCT has held the top position amongst all international container terminals in quickest turn times, according to the Harbor Trucking Association’s Truck Mobility Data powered by GeoStamp.
“LBCT has once again proven that it is committed to making its facility the most efficient anywhere,” said Robert Loya of NFI who also serves as President of the HTA. “Not only has the Middle Harbor Redevelopment Project delivered an unparalleled level of efficiency in the supply chain, but their new truck interface platform is exactly the type of solution we have been asking for.”
Mario Cordero, Executive Director at the Port of Long Beach added that, “LBCT continues to be an industry leader in working with the drayage community to realize greater efficiencies that impact the entire Port ecosystem.”
LBCT has fully tested and validated the APIs via its own proprietary Trucker Portal website. This same API integration has already been in use with key Truck Management System (TMS) providers including Compcare, Trinium and Profit Tools. These APIs are aimed at addressing challenges of system performance, data visibility, key performance indicator (KPI) metrics and administration costs involved with dispatching trucks to the terminal.
There are three key APIs being used today – container availability, appointment creation and pre-arrival information. Benefits of the new platform include automatic creation of appointments as soon as containers become available, automatic cancellation of appointments that cannot be kept allowing for that time slot to be made available to other truckers and automatic grouping of appointments to facilitate dual transactions.
