The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) on Tuesday said that the Port of Oakland and the Northwest Seaport Alliance, which includes the Port of Seattle and Port of Tacoma, have joined its freight digitization initiative known as Freight Logistics Optimization Works (FLOW).
The network now includes the five largest container ports on the West Coast—alongside the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach—which together handle 95% of the coast’s inbound container traffic, DOT said.
“We appreciate the USDOT for the opportunity to join the FLOW initiative,” Port of Oakland Executive Director Danny Wan said in a release. “FLOW will allow us to leverage valuable, goods movement information with our existing data initiatives. This will result in creating a more resilient, efficient, and sustainable supply chain up and down the West Coast.”
The DOT defines FLOW as a private-public partnership that helps create a shared picture of the U.S. supply chain for members, which include the nation’s busiest container ports, major ocean carriers, and some of the largest retail importers. The growth of the network increasingly allows ocean carriers, shippers, truckers, and railroads to be able to better plan for and predict capacity needs to keep cargo moving and avoid bottlenecks.
Through the initiative, DOT collects, aggregates, and anonymizes key information shared by participants on inbound containerized freight, starting with importer purchase orders, and aligns future demand volumes against current regional capacity to move ocean containers. FLOW now includes over 80 members including the eight largest U.S. container ports, nine of the largest ocean carriers, and nine of the 20 largest retailers by imports, including over 90 companies in the onboarding process.
“When President Biden took office, supply chains were in disarray-- upended by the global pandemic and contributing to rising prices and delayed shipments,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a release. “Our department has taken a number of aggressive steps to build more resilient supply chains through both historic infrastructure investments and unprecedented private-public partnerships, like FLOW, to better protect against shocks to the system.”
Editor's note: This article was revised on August 21 to add input from the Port of Oakland.
