Midyear Drayage & Chassis Report

Special Report

CCM in 2019 closed similar chassis pools in Chicago , the Ohio Valley and the Gulf Coast . Shutterstock . com

Cooperative chassis pools folding in three US cities amid loss of business

By Ari Ashe

Interoperable chassis pools in Kansas City , Memphis and St . Louis no longer provide marine chassis to truckers moving ocean containers , winding down operations on May 1 after losing much of their business in the last year .

Consolidated Chassis Management ( CCM ) operated what it termed “ cooperative ” or “ gray ” chassis pools in those cities , in which other chassis owners such as DCLI , Flexi- Van Leasing , TRAC Intermodal and others contributed to a joint pool open to truckers . If an ocean carrier had a deal with CCM , then a trucker could use any unit in the pool , regardless of the name stenciled on the chassis .

In Kansas City , Memphis and St . Louis , however , ocean carriers have gravitated toward other pools . In Memphis , specifically , the CCM pool was dealt a death blow when the North American Chassis Pool Cooperative ( NACPC ) launched its own pool last summer with brand new chassis .

“ As the ocean carriers pulled out of the pool , and our market share was going down , it really made no sense to continue the pool because there was no role for us ,” Jeff Lawrence , managing director of United Intermodal Enterprises , told the Journal of Commerce . “ That is precisely what has led to the end of Memphis consolidated chassis pool , but also the two so-called Midwest chassis pools , which is St . Louis and Kansas City .”

United Intermodal is a subsidiary of the Ocean Carriers Equipment Management Association ( OCEMA ) of 10 ocean carriers . OCEMA owned CCM until last October when it was sold to Oaktree Capital Management . CCM still administers pools for OCEMA but as a third-party subcontractor rather than a wholly owned subsidiary .

This isn ’ t the first time a CCM-administered pool has folded . In 2019 , CCM closed its pools in Chicago , the Ohio Valley and the Gulf Coast after chassis providers yanked their units out of the joint pool .

“ It really made no sense to continue the pool because there was no role for us .”

The major criticism has been the quality of chassis in CCM pools . CCM never owned chassis in Kansas City , Memphis or St . Louis , it simply managed a pool of aggregated equipment from DCLI , Flexi-Van , NACPC , TRAC and others .

Several chassis providers , though , were reluctant to put their highest-quality units in the CCM pools , preferring instead to reserve the best equipment for direct-to-customer relationships through their private equipment pools .

“ The pool wind-down process will take some months to get all the units that are out at distribution centers , but as of May 1 , we will no longer be giving out chassis ,” Lawrence said .

email : ari . ashe @ spglobal . com

22 Journal of Commerce | June 17 , 2024 www . joc . com