Unalaska, AK – APL ships will be arriving in Unalaska as planned, despite the fall of their crane. The ships will be loaded and unloaded at the city dock using the Horizon Lines crane. Horizon Lines terminal operations managers Bruce McConnell said their crane is smaller than the APL one, but that they can work around the problem. APL will rearrange the containers on the ship when docked in California so they are stacked two high instead of six high and are within 13 containers from the dock. The Horizon crane is shorter thus cannot reach as high, and it can only extend out 13 or 14 containers whereas the APL crane could reach out 17 or 18 containers.

McConnell said he does not think that APL's use of the city dock instead of their own facilities should cause any problems or changes.

"Maersk brings their ships on Monday and Tuesday, APL typically brings theirs on Wednesday, and ours usually shows up on Friday. So it shouldn't really cause too much of a scheduling issue unless one of the vessels hits weather or something. So there's going to be some conflict for sure some where. It's just going to be worked out on a case by case basis."

The two companies are still working out financial arrangements for the use of Horizon equipment. Both companies use union workers, so they will continue to pull from the same pool. Horizon will probably continue to employ crane operators who are familiar with operating their crane. McConnell said other than APL working from a different dock, there should not be many changes.

However, APL does not have a preferential use agreement with the city, so APL will have to pay tariffs for all of the containers that go across the city dock and will have to pay dockage fees to the city. The first APL ship is scheduled to arrive Wednesday at 9 pm.