Proposal · Laem Chabang Truck Queue Redesign · Friday, 18 September 2026

LCB ONE

One queue. Every terminal. No jam.
A single, demand-responsive truck appointment & gate orchestration platform for Laem Chabang Port — built to finish what the 2025 electronic‑queue mandate started.

Port Authority (ทลฉ) Terminal Operators Trucking & LSP Industry
UN/LOCODE THLCH Stakeholder groups 7 Terminals today 10 container terminals, siloed Slot granularity today 60 min, flat, export only

01 — The problem

A national congestion problem, made of seven stakeholders who each see one slice of it

Every party below touches a truck's trip through the port — but no one of them can see, or smooth, the whole flow. That's the gap this proposal closes.

Users of the queue
1
Cargo ownersเจ้าของสินค้า
2
Importers / exportersผู้นำเข้า-ส่งออก
3
Shipping linesสายเรือ
7
Trucking operatorsผู้ประกอบการขนส่ง
4
Customsศุลกากร
5
Terminal operatorsท่าเทียบเรือ
6
Port Authorityทลฉ
Providers of the queue

02 — Current state

Three systems, stitched together by hand-offs — with the payment step still unbuilt

SCM Net

  • Shipper / LSP trade documents
  • Booking → SI → Invoice/VGM
  • Draft B/L → B/L → C/O
  • Mostly manual Excel import/export at each step
→

Truck Q / Terminal API
e.g. B4 (TIPS)

  • GET /quota/{date} — 24 flat hourly slots
  • POST /reserve — plate + containers + hour
  • One booking surface per terminal
  • No cross-terminal visibility
⚠ e‑Payment & penalty: "Next Phase" — currently skipped
⚠ Endpoint prefix is exp_ — import has no documented API
→

Main Gate Check-in

  • Validates queue no. against booking
  • Matches BL/shore no. + container no.
  • No live ETA or arrival-smoothing signal
  • Physical queue forms on the public road

03 — Root-cause diagnosis

The jam isn't an adoption problem. It's a slot-design problem.

01

Flat, hourly slots

Every truck in an hour has every reason to arrive at :00 — there's no intra-hour smoothing tied to real yard/crane throughput.

02

No live payment or penalty

"Next Phase" in the port's own diagram — zero cost to speculative bookings or no-shows today.

03

Terminal silos

Each terminal runs its own quota; no cross-terminal sequencing and no port-wide view for PAT to rebalance.

04

Slow document chain upstream

SCM Net's largely manual Excel-based B/L chain pushes bookings to cluster right before vessel cutoff.

05

No virtual holding

Trucks queue on the public road, not at an off-site buffer — so even right-sized demand still shows up as a physical jam.

06

No driver feedback loop

No "leave now" signal, so trucks arrive early and idle at the gate rather than en route on a timed approach.

07

Import likely bypasses booking entirely

The documented API is export-only; import trucks share the same gates without necessarily going through any slot-based system at all.

04 — The solution

LCB ONE extends the mandate PAT already committed to — it doesn't replace it

Every terminal keeps its own operations. LCB ONE sits as the shared booking, pricing, and visibility layer across all of them, using the same API pattern B4 (TIPS) already exposes as the integration contract — extended to cover import as well as export from day one.

01 · Dynamic slot engine

10–15 min windows, capacity computed from live yard/gate/crane signals, not a flat number.

02 · Payment + reliability score

Activates the QR/PromptPay step already diagrammed; no-shows throttle a company's future booking priority.

03 · Control tower for PAT

Live cross-terminal utilization, queue length, and congestion forecast — with rebalancing levers.

04 · SCM Net fast-path

Provisional booking the moment SI/VGM are ready, instead of waiting for the full document chain.

05 · Virtual queue

App/LINE "leave now" and buffer-yard holding, keeping trucks off the public road until called.

06 · Our own canonical API

LCB ONE's own reservation contract, not borrowed from any one terminal. A thin adapter maps to systems like B4 (TIPS); terminals with none adopt LCB ONE directly.

05 — Architecture

Three layers: terminal adapters, a shared core, and role-specific channels

Channels — what each stakeholder actually uses
Truck Q driver app SCM Net booking widget PAT control tower Terminal ops console
↑ ↓
LCB ONE core services
Dynamic slot engine Reservation ledger Payment & penalty Reliability scoring Notification hub Control-tower analytics
↑ ↓
Terminal layer — LCB ONE's own gate console, or a thin adapter where a system already exists
B4 adapter (TIPS) B2 adapter (Evergreen) C1/C2 adapter (Hutchison) LCB ONE console (no existing system) Main Gate Check-in

Own canonical reservation API (§6 of the proposal doc), event-driven behind LCB ONE's own OAuth2 gateway; Redis-backed slot locking to prevent overbooking under burst load; message queue for reservation/gate events; a direct e-Customs/NSW feed for import eligibility; LINE OA as the pragmatic driver-notification channel.

06 — Dynamic slot engine

Same daily capacity, spread so it never spikes at the top of the hour

Today — flat, 60‑min slots Proposed — dynamic, 15‑min slots
08:0010:0012:0014:0016:0018:00

Illustrative: today's model allows every truck booked in an hour to target :00, producing a spike each hour. The dynamic engine holds the same total throughput but allocates it across 15‑minute windows sized to real yard/gate capacity — flattening arrivals without reducing volume.

07 — Value by stakeholder

The same platform, three different reasons to want it

Port Authority

  • Completes the electronic-queue mandate with a system built to actually reduce congestion, not just digitize the paper
  • One national view of queue health across every terminal
  • Rebalancing levers instead of reactive gate-closures
  • Reusable OpenAPI contract for future terminals

Terminal operators

  • Keep existing systems — LCB ONE adapts to the TIPS-style API you already run
  • Fewer walk-up trucks arriving off-schedule at the gate
  • Capacity signals (yard/crane) finally drive the quota, not a fixed guess
  • Reliability scoring rewards your best-behaved carriers automatically

Trucking & LSP industry

  • One app for every terminal instead of juggling separate logins
  • LSPs reserve & pay earlier — the moment SI/VGM are ready, not at the cutoff scramble
  • Drivers get "leave now" timing — less idling, less fuel, less overtime, no payment step on their side
  • Good track record compounds into priority slots

08 — Roadmap

Phased to ship fast, aligned to PAT's own MOU milestones

Phase 1 — MVP

Unified booking across terminals

One booking surface calling the existing export API as-is, plus a new mirrored import endpoint built alongside it since none exists today. Fastest path to a working demo, covering both directions from day one.

Phase 2 — Smooth the demand

Dynamic slot engine + live payment

15‑minute capacity-aware windows; activate the QR/PromptPay step already diagrammed as "Next Phase," tied to the reliability score.

Phase 3 — See the whole port

Control tower + SCM Net fast-path

PAT-facing cross-terminal dashboard; early provisional booking as soon as SI/VGM are ready in SCM Net.

Phase 4 — Off the public road

Virtual queue + marshalling yards

GPS-based "leave now" notifications and buffer-yard holding — the piece that needs physical/ops coordination alongside the software.

Worth naming in the room: PAT's own MOU timeline targeted 100% electronic queuing by October 2025 — already passed. If congestion persists despite that rollout, it confirms this is a system-design problem the mandate alone doesn't solve. If the rollout slipped instead, this roadmap is the technical backbone to finally finish it.

The ask

Start one terminal, prove the flattening, then plug in the rest

A single-terminal Phase 1 pilot validates the model against real gate data before asking any stakeholder group to commit port-wide.

Step 1

Pick one terminal + one gate for a 4–6 week Phase 1 pilot on top of its existing API.

Step 2

Measure gate wait time and arrival clustering, before vs. after dynamic slotting.

Step 3

Use pilot data to bring associations and remaining terminals into the shared platform.

LCB ONE — Unified Truck Queue & Gate Orchestration Platform Prepared for Laem Chabang Port stakeholders · 18 September 2026