Cargo

The county Airport Commission approved a plan Wednesday that would allow United Parcel Service and Federal Express to operate all-cargo jetliners at John Wayne Airport. If the County Board of Supervisors similarly approves the plan on Tuesday, a United Parcel Service spokesman said, the company expects to begin a weekday flight by the end of next week. "We're talking a matter of days," said David Vaughan, the company's Washington-based lawyer. "We've been ready for 6 1/2 years."

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., the largest U.S. railroad by shipments, said Friday that it had set limits on some eastbound international cargo from Los Angeles to prevent congestion as Asian imports rise. The company started a system June 18 that sets maximum container-cargo volumes for ocean-shipment haulers, spokesman Richard Russack said. He declined to say how much business the Fort Worth-based railroad turned away or identify the customers affected. L.A. is the busiest U.S.

Cargo destined for the United States has not been slowed by Sunday's enforcement of a rule aimed at protecting U.S. ports and shipping lanes from terrorists, according to U.S. Customs. Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner said more than 90% of shippers were meeting the tougher standard, which requires them to provide full descriptions of the contents of their containers 24 hours before they are loaded. Because of confusion over the new rule, which is part of the U.S.

The Federal Aviation Administration is questioning anew Orange County's ban on cargo flights at John Wayne Airport, a policy adopted years ago to limit jet noise. Dale E. McDaniel, the FAA's acting assistant administrator for policy, wrote a Dec. 18 letter supporting a bid by UPS to use the airport. The letter to Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, who at the time was chairman of the Board of Supervisors, wasn't made public until Wednesday.

Usually when a dog escapes in an airplane cargo hold it leaves a mess to clean up afterward. But on a July 24 United Airlines flight between San Francisco and Boston that carried 159 passengers, an Irish wolfhound did much worse. Not only did it chew its way out of a cage, it burrowed through the Fiberglass liner and into a bundle of wires, destroying some that control warning lights in the plane cockpit and others that extend the wing flaps, needed to slow the plane upon landing.

A terminal operator at the Port of Los Angeles will lose three customers that move about $40 million in cargo each year when those shipping lines shift their business to the neighboring Port of Long Beach in November, officials said Thursday. The decision represents a loss for TraPac terminal and the Port of Los Angeles. The three companies, all based in Asia, send 12,000 cargo containers a month through the terminal, and the ports gain $75 in income from each container.

For days, the Ciudad de Buenaventura has plowed the waters up and down the Pacific Coast in search of a place to unload 34 tons of Salvadoran coffee beans. Each time the Colombian freighter docked at a West Coast port, it was turned away. In San Francisco, then Vancouver, British Columbia, and finally Seattle, activists sponsoring a boycott of Salvadoran coffee--with the help of sympathetic longshoremen--have forced the vessel to move on, its cargo unrelieved.

More than a week after a federal injunction forced the reopening of West Coast ports, the supply chain from Asia to the middle of America is still snarled badly enough to close factories, cause retailers to fret and drive truckers to despair. Honda announced Friday that it was halting production at four Ohio plants for the weekend to allow parts to build up in the automaker's supply line.

Metal cargo containers--ideal storage space to some Bellflower residents and businesses but eyesores to others--apparently are about to hit the road out of town. A divided Bellflower City Council voted recently to order businesses and residents to get rid of the containers. Containers have never been permitted in the city, but the ban has been ignored. "They're ugly," Councilman Ray T. Smith said in explaining why he wanted shipping containers banished from the city.

Price competition among foreign and domestic shipping lines has been virtually eliminated for importers seeking space aboard cargo ships bound for the United States from Asia, a new federal report concludes. The report, based on a six-month investigation by the Federal Maritime Commission, verifies a host of complaints from U.S. companies in 1998, when a glut of Asian cargo jammed freighters and left many businesses desperate to get their holiday shipments.