Tuxpan Port Terminal (TPT) was developed by SSA Mexico, a subsidiary of US-based Carrix Group. It is the second terminal in the Carrix network to feature a cantilever ASC yard system (after MIT Panama), and the first semiautomated terminal to open in Mexico.

TPT operates eight dual cantilever ASCs with the ABB crane control system. These will handle the road trucks and terminal tractors (or UTRs as they are also known). Road trucks are a particular challenge in Mexico as double trailers carrying two 40ft containers are common. With just eight ASCs, TPT is targeting high crane productivity and has a goal to handle 30 double trailers per hour with each ASC.

To manage the flow of road trucks, TPT has implemented a booking system for gate moves. Electronic pre-advice of truck moves is integrated with the TOS (Tideworks) to establish the work order sequence and truck routing. TPT has opted for RFID tags to identify trucks and UTRs as they move around the terminal and under the ASCs in the yard. 

Going passive

Across the globe, active RFID tags (tags with a battery that transmit their own signal to a reader) remain the most popular RFID technology for identifying road trucks at the gates of container terminals, due to their relatively long read range. Most commonly, these are distributed to truckers on a port-wide basis, even if individual terminals opt not to use them. At Tuxpan, however, TPT is managing the truck tagging system itself.

John Bressi, general manager at TPT, said it considered active RFID, but the cost of the tags was a major concern. Mexico has a large number of truckers, and the business operates on very thin margins. While ports in other locations can charge truckers up to US$90 to fit a tag such a model would be very challenging in Mexico.

TPT selected UK-based International Terminal Solutions (ITS) to supply low-cost passive RFID tags, which TPT will purchase itself and issue to truck drivers. ITS supplied 30,000 EPC Gen 2 UHF tags, operating in the 902 to 928 MHz band, enough for 15,000 trucks (two per truck). Internal UTRs have slightly different tags in a rugged housing.

As passive tags do not need a power source, there are no batteries to maintain. Another advantage is that they are designed to open international standards, so different brands are interchangeable, and the purchase price is much lower – just a few cents each, compared to US$10s per unit for active tags, not including maintenance costs. 

Bressi added that TPT could be tagging as many as 10,000 or more trucks, and it had been concerned about ongoing maintenance of batteries, as well as the initial purchase price. When it comes to tucks that arrive without a tag, passive tags are also a much simpler solution. Lowcost adhesive passive tags can be quickly mounted at the gate, and then stay with the truck permanently. Terminals that rely on RFID for a process and use active tags typically have to issue temporary tags, and have a process for collecting these at the out gate. 

TPT is also managing the distribution process, and tags can either be sent directly to trucking companies or installed at the terminal, where the truck is registered and the driver is also issued with an ID card in a process that typically takes five minutes. The tags are a self-adhesive design that sticks permanently to the truck windscreen. Once adhered, they cannot be removed without being destroyed. 

Keeping track

Like most automated terminals, TPT will require trucks to complete a pre-advice stage before they come to the terminal. At the terminal, a gate automation system identifies the truck, container and driver and the RFID tag is read. The TOS then generates the work order sequence and routing for the particular move. The gate system is also integrated with remote CCTV security.  

The RFID tags are read again at waypoint portals around the terminal, gathering data used by the TOS to promote work orders. At the cranes, each ASC has two readers per cantilever, one for each truck lane, with four antennas per reader. Tags are read again at the out gate to support outbound truck processing.    

Allan Jones, head of business development at ITS, said the read range is “reliably around 8m” for the windscreen sticker tags mounted on road trucks, whereas 15m-plus can be achieved for the tags on the UTRs.

TPT is not the first terminal to use passive RFID, but others that have, found that it could not deliver the read-range required on road trucks, and/or had issues with line of sight requirement between the tags and readers. 

ITS managing director Richard Lambert does not believe this is a problem, and said ITS has been working with passive RFID inside terminals since 2008, starting with an application in the roro sector. Some of the passive tags ITS has used, he added, “have a theoretical range of up to 35m, and can be mounted on and off metal with no degradation of the range”.

Lambert stressed the need for the performance of the tags to be matched to the requirements of the application: “To maintain identification reliability, the systems are configured to work well within the theoretical range of the tags used, and are also implemented with technology to eliminate incorrect identification from trucks in a line-up, and allow the use of multi-trailer configurations,” said Lambert. 

“In the implementation for TPT, both line-ups and multitrailers are present in the operation, and it is essential that the system identifies the correct truck, even when it is a rear 20ft container being handled on the rear trailer.”

Data at the right time

Each tag has its own unique ID, and the registration data is stored in an SQL data base. At the terminal, the software must manage the truck arrival process at the ASCs. As well as identifying the trucks, this requires managing the
logic for serving multiple trucks in the correct sequence, including rejecting trucks that arrive at the crane out of sequence (due to passing another in the terminal, for example). The system also has to be able to recognise when a
trailer is no longer under a crane. ITS manages this through its middleware application, which is integrated with the Tideworks TOS.

TPT has just opened, and, speaking at TOC Americas in Cancun last month, Bressi noted that its gate and traffic management systems are different to how other Mexican ports operate, so some trucker education will be required. TPT plans to hire ambassadors to ride in trucks initially, helping drivers become more familiar with the system.

For ITS, the project highlights that terminals should keep an open mind about passive RFID. While ITS will use the right technology for each application “now that we have implemented the first terminal using very lowcost tags for external trucks, we cannot see a case for using active tags in a container terminal when passive can do the job at all levels and at a much lower cost,” concluded Jones.

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This complete item is approximately 1000 words in length, and appeared in the November 2016 issue of WorldCargo News, on page 30. To access this issue download the PDF here.