Truck Appointment and Off-peak Program at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach

A well-studied case of smart landside logistics and gate management at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is the introduction and evolution of terminal truck appointment systems and the Pier Pass Off-peak Program in the San Pedro Bay port complex in California, USA. Together, these initiatives show how coordinated gate management, appointments and extended hours can cut truck congestion, improve turn times and reduce emissions around one of the world’s largest container gateways. (Carr and Ramezani, 2022)

Location and dates

The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach sit side-by-side in San Pedro Bay, Southern California, and together handled about 31% of US containerized international waterborne trade in 2025. Before the OffPeak program, 88% of containers moved by truck at the ports were picked up or delivered between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. on weekdays. (PierPass, n.d.)

To address this:

• In 2005, terminal operators launched the PierPass OffPeak program, funded by a Traffic Mitigation Fee (TMF), to open regular night and weekend gates and shift truck traffic away from weekday daytime hours. (PierPass, n.d.)
• Over the late 2000s and 2010s, most container terminals deployed truck appointment systems, and since November 2018 appointments have been required for all import containers at the 12 terminals. (PierPass, 2018)
• In November 2018, Pier Pass was restructured into “Pier Pass 2.0,” moving from a day-vs-night differential fee to a lower, flat TMF and an appointment-centric model designed to spread truck arrivals more evenly across all shifts. (Container News, 2019)

System summary

The San Pedro Bay gateway now combines:

• Terminal gate appointment systems (TAS): Truckers must book an appointment for all import containers, and by 2019 eight of the 12 terminals also offered appointments for exports and empties. (PierPass, 2018; Container News, 2019)
• Pier Pass Off-peak with extended gate hours: Off-peak funds regular night and Saturday gates at all terminals. Under Pier Pass 2.0, the TMF is charged on nearly all import and export containers, regardless of day or night, but at a lower, flat rate, removing the sharp 6pm threshold that previously drove intense queuing. (PierPass, 2018; Container News, 2019)
• Operational refinements: Terminals employ strategies such as peel-off piles (where truckers pick up the top container from a designated stack), designated trucking-company piles, and common business rules for appointments to increase throughput and reduce searching and re-handles in the yard. (Carr and Ramezani, 2022)

These measures form a smart landside logistics system: gate flows are controlled via appointments and pricing, hours are extended to spread demand, and yard strategies are coordinated with gate rules.

Costs

Costs fall into several categories:

• Technology and integration: Investment in appointment-system software, gate kiosks, OCR, and back-end integration with terminal operating systems. (Carr and Ramezani, 2022)
• Operational costs for extended hours: Off-peak night and Saturday gates require additional labor and utilities; these are funded by the TMF, which in 2024 was a flat per-TEU fee charged on almost all loaded containers moved by truck. (PierPass, 2024)

Exact dollar figures for IT and operational costs per terminal are not public, but the TMF has generated hundreds of millions of dollars over time to fund OffPeak operations; in 2021 alone it collected $303.9 million against net OffPeak costs of $348.4 million. (PierPass, 2022)

Benefits

The documented benefits are significant:

• Shift of truck traffic to off-peak hours: From July 2005 through October 2019, 46.7 million truck trips were diverted from weekday daytime to Off-peak gates. (PierPass, 2019)
• Reduced queuing and improved turn times: Before Pier Pass 2.0, trucks often queued outside terminals before 6pm to avoid the daytime TMF, creating long lines and local pollution hot spots. With the shift to a flat fee and appointment-centric operations, PierPass reported in 2019 that these late-afternoon queues had largely disappeared and truck arrivals are more evenly distributed across day and night shifts. (Container News, 2019) An earlier academic evaluation of the appointment systems introduced under California Assembly Bill 2650 found no evidence of reduced queuing or transaction times. (Giuliano and O'Brien, 2007)
• Increased truck productivity: By smoothing flows and reducing wait times, truckers can complete more turns per day, improving asset and driver utilization. Peel-off operations and designated stacks further reduce in-terminal search time, allowing more moves per gate slot. (Carr and Ramezani, 2022)
• Environmental benefits:

In principle, fewer and shorter queues at gates mean less idling and stop-start driving near the ports, lowering local NOₓ, PM and CO₂ emissions. Shifting large volumes of truck traffic to off-peak periods also spreads the environmental load over time and avoids adding to peak hour urban congestion. These emissions effects were not measured in the sources reviewed.

Lessons and implications

The Los Angeles/Long Beach case demonstrates that:

• Smart landside logistics is not just about technology; it requires coordinated pricing (TMF), extended hours and yard-strategy changes.
• Appointment systems deliver the biggest benefits when terminals harmonize rules and apply concepts like peel-off piles and designated trucking-company stacks.
• Realistic expectations are important: TAS do not eliminate all congestion, but they can materially reduce extreme queues and stabilize truck turn times even under high volume. (Carr and Ramezani, 2022)

For other ports, the San Pedro Bay experience shows how combining digital gate appointments, extended hours and targeted yard strategies can improve fluidity, cut truck idling, and enhance both economic performance and community environmental outcomes.