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Photo courtesy of the Port of Los Angeles
Container ships are backed up once again off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach waiting for days for a berth as gridlock continues at the largest port complex in the Americas. There is a “perfect storm” of reasons for the delays.
Container ship traffic is relatively high at the port complex as ships in the Trans-Pacific trade are getting consistently larger with increased volumes, requiring longer times at berth, often as many as four days, before ships can be unloaded, reloaded and sent back out to sea.
Alliance partners are spreading out their vessel calls over multiple terminals in Los Angeles-Long Beach, creating a logistical nightmare for truckers and cargo interests attempting to match the right chassis with the right containers.
Severe terminal congestion throughout the port increases wait times where shippers say it’s taking sometimes weeks to evacuate containers from terminals due to a shortage of chassis, drayage drivers, rail cars, and, most recently, slowdowns by members of the ILWU. Average truck turn times at the terminals is now up to 140 minutes. Efforts to fix the congestion problem in Southern California will fall short until the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) finalize a new contract.
“Escalating its use of orchestrated job actions that have already crippled terminal operations at Pacific Northwest ports, the ILWU has now targeted the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach by unilaterally refusing to dispatch hundreds of qualified, skilled workers for critically important positions transporting containers in terminal yards at the nation’s largest port complex,” according to a press relase from the PMA.
In the Pacific Northwest ports of Tacoma and Seattle, continuing slowdowns have resulted in terminal productivity being reduced by an average of 40% to 60%. Carriers are trying to divert cargo to Southern California, which will further exacerbate the gridlock there.
