The Port of Long Beach shows signs that another unprecedented supply chain storm is in the winds. After Long Beach and the Port of Los Angeles struggled to move containers effectively, more than 110 cargo vessels were stuck idling off the coast in 2021. Early warning signs such as rising container delays and congested rail systems indicate 2022 could be Déjà vu all over again.
“We are at a point of inflection as to the rail bottlenecks, including the lack of rail cars at the nation’s largest and most significant container gateway,” Port of Long Beach executive director Mario Cordero reportedly said.
Container wait times have steadily ticked up to more than eight days at the Port of Long Beach and 7.5 days in Los Angeles. Officials overseeing the country’s two largest ports have threatened and pulled back levies for long-dwelling containers. As of the first week of July, Long Beach saw approximately 28,723 containers dwelling at least nine days, marking a reported 9 percent increase above the headline-grabbing logjams during the winter months. And in less than two weeks, long-dwelling numbers spiked by 40 percent despite more containers making their way by rail than in October 2021.
“Sixty percent of our long dwelling containers are scheduled to go on the rail,” Port of Los Angeles executive director Gene Seroka reportedly said. “Our land capacity is at 90 percent.”
Southern California has persistently struggled with warehouse capacity, rising to upwards of 98 percent unavailability. Logistics experts have worked diligently to integrate increased rail transportation to relieve the trucking sector. Unfortunately, railroads have not always proven reliable partners, and importers and big box retailers prefer hauling freight via trucks. Still, some inland freight transportation experts do not necessarily agree that rail systems cannot alleviate congestion.
“The decision of where a container bound for rail goes is decided by the ocean carriers. The carriers are limiting which inland ports to go to. If they were flexible to diversify their rail routes, it would ease the bottlenecks on the rails and free up congestion,” Utah Inland Port Authority executive director Jack Hedge reportedly said. “But that would mean their containers would be inland longer.”
Although vessel docking and offloading times have steadily improved since the peak of the supply chain snarl, that progress may have recently crossed a thin red line. Limited and sometimes challenging rail systems, coupled with increased imports, have put the pair of ports in the path of a supply chain storm. Containers are quickly eating up yard acreage as well as pop-up spaces offsite.
“As these containers stack up, terminals may eventually run out of space and be unable to take new imports – a slippery slope which may cause vessel dwell times to once again increase, or cause the carriers to instead call another port altogether and avoid the slowdown,” Captain Adil Ashiq, United States Western Region executive for Marine Traffic, reportedly said.
Inland hubs such as Chicago are addressing efficiencies and the Port of New York-New Jersey is moving 6.5 percent of containers previously scheduled to arrive in California. Despite the national efforts to seamlessly move freight, Long Beach and Los Angeles appear to be again slipping behind.
Sources:
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/long-beach-container-backlog-crosses-red-line-as-delays-mount
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