News Content

Hamburg copies truck slot booking to cut surges, bottlenecks

HAMBURG is now the first port in Germany to introduce a time slot-booking system for container trucks to cope with impact of growing mega ship calls.

Container truckers at HHLA Container Terminal Burchardkai, Altenwerder, and Tollerort, as well as the independent non-HHLA Eurogate Container Terminal Hamburg, will be required to use specific one-hour time slots.

It is a system already used by several other terminals in Europe and in the United States.

Mega ships of 20,000 TEU now call at Germany's biggest port. That's 14,500 TEU lifted per call, causing massive surges and bottlenecks.

Slot-booking is to mitigate surges by spreading truck handling evenly, reducing driver dwell time. It is also expected to increase the capacity of terminals through improved infrastructure use.

Truckers will be notified of their requested movement time through electronic data interchange on a website.

If the driver misses his slot then he is given a lower priority. If he is late, the slot is lost and must book anew.

Hamburg handled 6.8 million TEU in the first nine months of the year, up 0.4 per cent year on year. Of this, 5.8 million TEU were laden boxes that grew 1.2 per cent.

China is Hamburg's biggest trading partner, accounting for 29 per cent of the port's throughput. With a 50 per cent share of import and export volume, Hamburg is also the leading transshipment centre for German foreign trade with China.