Crowley Introduces Electronic Arrival Notices for Freight Entering Puerto Rico

2007-01-23

New Service to Benefit Islands Retailers, Truckers and Consumers

(SAN JUAN, PR; January 22, 2007) Crowley Maritime Corporations Puerto Rico/Caribbean liner services group sent its first electronic arrival notices for freight entering Puerto Rico last week. These notices which contain the bill of lading information give customers notice 24 hours in advance that their freight is on an incoming vessel versus the old notification that alerted them after their cargo was cleared by Hacienda, Puerto Ricos Department of Treasury.

What this means is that retailers on the island will know ahead of time what is in their containers and when those containers are arriving so that they can prioritize which loads they want to have picked up first after its been cleared in order to get their most-needed merchandise to consumers the fastest, said Roberto Lugo, Crowleys vice president in Puerto Rico Shippers also benefit by being able to account for merchandise in their inventories more rapidly, which can be particularly important for month-end inventory reporting.

Also benefiting are the truckers on the island, because they no longer have to stop and pick up the bill of lading from Crowleys terminal office at Isla Grande. With Crowley now faxing or emailing bill of lading information to customers ahead of time, truckers can proceed directly to equipment control where they receive the equipment interchange agreement and the loaded cargo without additional delay.

This is a system that we built internally to respond to the needs of our customers and streamline our notification process, said Deena LeBlanc, manager freight services. Customers have been added to a database using their customer/vendor number as identification. For the first voyage under this new notification system, about 50 percent of shippers in Puerto Rico were included in the database to receive their information electronically and in advance. This number will continue to grow as additional shippers are added to the database, and once the reporting is at 100 percent for Puerto Rico, we hope to roll the system out in other markets.

Crowley and its predecessor company have been serving the Puerto Rico market since 1954, longer than any other carrier in the trade. The company, with nearly 300 Puerto Rico employees, is also the No. 1 ocean carrier between the island commonwealth and the U.S. mainland with more weekly sailings and more cargo carried annually than any other shipping line.

Crowley Maritime Corporation, the parent company for the Puerto Rico/Caribbean liner services unit, was founded in 1892 and is primarily a family and employee-owned company that provides diversified transportation and logistics services in domestic and international markets by means of four operating lines of business: Liner Services, Logistics Services, Petroleum Services and Marine Services. Other services provided within these business lines include contract towing and transportation; ship assist and escort; energy support; salvage and emergency response; vessel management, and petroleum and chemical transportation, distribution and sales. Additional information about Crowley its subsidiaries and business units may be found on the Internet at www.Crowley.com.

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