February 24, 2018 Our trucking partners, and by extension, our customers, have been experiencing wait times, congestion and terminal dwells at the Port of Montreal this winter.

For the last few months, but most severely in the last few weeks, there have been above-average delays at all terminals on the Island of Montreal.

Weather has been a contributing factor, along with road repairs across the city, according to our trucking partners. But the situation appears to have gotten worse.

We have received notification that a number of our trucking partners are now considering an increase to their charges to compensate for the waiting time in the terminals and the daily traffic congestion.

As of March 1st, they will start charging for waiting time in the terminal after one hour. Some are putting in place a congestion surcharge per container for each pickup or delivery.

In some cases, there has been a doubling of delivery charges or extra charges for container drops for local delivery, not seen before.

Pre-pull surcharges are also being applied in some cases.

If truckers start applying additional surcharges, we have little choice but to recover costs by adding on to drayage charges to our customers.

We have already informed CIFFA and they have requested an update and statement from the Port of Montreal and will keep us apprised of any new information.

The Port Authority plans to start construction on a new container terminal in the South Shore town of Contrecur in 2020. The initial phase is scheduled to be completed by 2023.

The new terminal will increase the container capacity of the port by a third, in anticipation of future needs. The ports current growth rate is pegged at 3.9%, but traffic has grown faster than that over the past two years, the ports vice-president of operations, Daniel Dagenais, told the Montreal Gazette recently.

The Port of Montreal can currently handle the equivalent of 2.1 million containers a year; the new terminal will add 1.15 million containers to that capacity.

Source: CIFFA