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Ocean Winds Anyone interested in reliving the romance of life on the high seas from days in the distant and irretrievable past might sign up for one of those rare and expensive cruises aboard tramp steamers or, for those feeling less adventurous, curl up with the works of Melville or other authors steeped in ocean lore. But for a still more compelling look at maritime life in another age, just look at the self-proclaimed mission of the Trans- Atlantic Conference Agreement. "Shipping Conferences have served the maritime industry and the users of its services since wind and sail gave way to steam propulsion," TACA writes dreamily on its Web site. "Being no longer reliant on the vagaries of wind to power their vessels, ship owners were able to provide a regular and reliable liner service between ports. Traders who wanted to reach overseas markets and compete on price and delivery with local domestic suppliers benefited from a stable trading environment where service and rate levels were not subject to wild swings." You can practically taste the salt in the air, and perhaps even feel your transport budget floating away on those insistent ocean winds. We're glad to see, however, that the gusts coming off the seas these days are winds of change and that the direction is decidedly in favor of commerce and true competition. The Federal Maritime Commission expects to issue a new rule extending confidential contract authority to nonvessel operating common carriers by the start of next year. That is the most important development in maritime commerce regulation since the Ocean Shipping Reform Act took effect in 1999 not for what it does in the narrow sense - and that alone is significant - but for what it will mean to the future of ocean-going trade. At the recent three-sided meeting in San Antonio of the National Industrial Transportation League, the Intermodal Association of North America and the Transportation Intermediaries Association, it was clear that the NVO ruling is just one step on the road to full and complete maritime deregulation. Along with changes in the ocean marketplace since 1999 and recent developments in Europe challenging the primacy of rate-setting conferences, the new rule in Washington sends the maritime further down a track that has already been taken by the rest of the transportation industry, with shippers following happily alongside. "Change is going to continue and there is going to be reduced influence of the existing agreements," Mick Barr, associate director of global physical distribution at Procter & Gamble told a panel on OSRA at the San Antonio meeting. "Antitrust immunity is going away. OSRA is not ideal. But it allows us the opportunity for real reform." In fact, changes in the marketplace since OSRA suggest that the vessel operators that have long sought protection are now driving that reform. Liner giants such as APL, Maersk, NYK and others have burgeoning logistics divisions that compete with the services provided by freight forwarders. And service contracts, not conference agreements, now govern the largest share of the goods moving on the world's shipping lines. "OSRA has succeeded to a great extent," notes Christopher Koch, president and CEO of the World Shipping Council, the Washington trade association representing the world's liner companies, which supported the FMC's contracting ruling. What has not succeeded, as the marketplace has shown in ocean as well as air, trucking and the rail industry, is economic regulation. Whatever vestiges are left of that remnant of a bygone era should be put out to sea and scattered to the winds.
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