Here's the current workflow in the Port of Houston: Freight comes in. It’s transported by truck to nearby warehouses. And then it’s put on other trucks and shipped across the country.
But in Houston, if the freight coming off the boat weighs more than 80,000 pounds, it has to be broken into separate loads for that short trek to a warehouse — often about five miles.
Jim Henderson and others who run some of those warehouses and short-haul trucks told lawmakers Monday that they want the 80,000-pound limit increased.
“It's not the global standard anymore,” said Henderson, who works for New Orleans Cold Storage, a shipping and warehouse company that uses refrigerated trucks. “South Carolina just changed theirs, and they were the last behind Houston. Houston is the last place where they have not updated the laws to react to the global standard."