LA-LB Congestion

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have delayed by one week implementation of costly emergency fees on long-dwell containers as retailers rush to vacate those containers from the docks.

President Biden’s recognition of global supply chain challenges draws attention to congestion in the US supply chain and should result in direct measures to mitigate the problems, according to the executive director of the Port of Los Angeles.

The backlog of vessels outside the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is rapidly approaching levels seen during last year’s peak season due to continued explosive imports and inland rail bottlenecks.

The Commerce Department will push ahead with an anti-dumping duty on Chinese-built marine chassis, which would raise prices on equipment at a time when there are dislocations and shortages in several US ports and rail hubs.

Months-long congestion and the slow return of empty containers at the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and New York and New Jersey are flowing inland to key rail hubs such as Chicago and Dallas.

The Federal Maritime Commission will take a deep look into the detention and demurrage practices in Southern California and New York and New Jersey, requiring ocean carriers and maritime terminal operators to answer questions about their policies related to importers and exporters.

Seeing glimpses of improved productivity, terminal operators in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach predict a return to some sense of normalcy between April and June.

With the entire Southern California supply chain overwhelmed by imports, harbor truckers are asking ocean carriers to suspend detention and demurrage charges until the congestion problems are fixed.

Matson says e-commerce demand for expedited Asian service will remain high even when the impact of the pandemic COVID-19 recedes.

CMA CGM’s move to expand its intermodal surcharge to Southern California reflects what some forwarders and drayage operators say is a worsening situation at the port complex as elevated Asia import volumes don’t let up.

The Federal Maritime Commission will engage stakeholders on how it can maintain cargo fluidity in the supply chain during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in a bid to avoid disruption.

While Ocean Network Express is waiving detention penalties tied to the coronavirus, other ocean carriers have not shown as much flexibility when cargo owners cannot return empty boxes during the supply chain disruption.

Unless the Los Angeles-Long Beach ports attract more cargo, they could wind up stuck with a hefty bill for the intermodal corridor’s bond debt, a report says.

With blank sailings kicking in and congestion at Chicago rail yards easing, terminal operators in LA-LB say they have turned the corner and they see end of congestion by mid-March

Vessel reliability in the trans-Pacific trades is beginning to improve now that West Coast labor issues have been resolved, but it still has a long way to go before it is acceptable, metrics provided by Seaintel Maritime Analysis and the Marine Exchange of Southern California show.

West Coast ports say they’ll have productivity back to normal by the end of May after more than four months of congestion, but, in the meantime, some shippers continue to struggle with delays and lost business.

Southern California truckers who said they were improperly charged late fees for containers they couldn’t return on time to gridlocked ports received mixed decisions in the first arbitrators’ rulings on their cases.

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach continue to dig out of the vessel backlog that has plagued the largest U.S. port complex since last fall. For the third consecutive day, the Marine Exchange of Southern California reported that no container ships were at anchor.

Legislation pushed by the third-ranking Senate Republican aims to keep Congress more in the loop on port congestion flare-ups and gauge how labor negotiations impact port performance.

Vessel, yard and gate operations at West Coast ports are not yet back to normal after almost seven months of crippling congestion, but the ports and port users are confident that “normal’ will happen by the end of May.

There’s a silver lining in every sky-high stack of containers — if you’re an expedited trucking company. For carriers that move goods quickly by any and all means possible, the container logjam that built up during the West Coast port labor dispute was simply a bonanza.

Noting what could be the “new normal” at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the Marine Exchange of Southern California said Monday there were no container ships at anchor, and none are expected to stop at anchor on Tuesday, either.

Delays in processing high volumes of containers at West Coast warehouses and DCs point to the need for better packing and loading of containers in Asia, a trucking executive says.

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach achieved a post-congestion milestone this week with no container vessels arriving at anchor on Tuesday, and again on Thursday, for brief periods.

But the ports should recoup much of their lost market share next year and beyond if they address their congestion and labor problems, speakers at the Port of Long Beach Pulse of the Ports breakfast said Wednesday.

Cargo interests had much to complain about at a listening session convened Wednesday by Los Angeles and Long Beach port leaders. They suffered through four punishing months of labor slowdowns at West Coast ports, but their biggest concerns centered on problems that were present even before the coastwide contract negotiations began last May — cost and reliability.

Container volumes at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach came roaring back in March, with the largest U.S. port complex reporting a 24 percent increase in container traffic compared to March 2014.

A U.S. senator is asking Congress’s watchdog to study the labor-related disruption at U.S. West Coast ports, the latest sign of Congress getting more involved in curbing marine terminal congestion that threatens the nation’s economic growth.

The chief executives of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are looking beyond their current congestion problems to resume what they see as their ports’ rightful role as leaders of the U.S. port industry, and it will all be about infrastructure and processes.

Hamburg Süd led the container shipping industry in on-time service in February, putting an end to Maersk Line’s six-month hold on the top spot, according to SeaIntel Maritime Analysis.

East Coast containerized imports in February almost reached parity with West Coast imports, demonstrating the profound shift in trade that has resulted from port congestion and work slowdowns by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union at West Coast ports. The coming months will determine how much of the shift will be permanent.

Shipment delays through U.S. West Coast ports, compounded by severe late winter weather, cost some retailers sales in recent months, but they believe the worst is over and say inventory levels are returning to normal.

Southern California truckers who filed complaints with the Uniform Intermodal Interchange Agreement alleging unfair charges for extended storage and late return of equipment at congested marine terminals in recent months should start to see arbitration rulings beginning in mid-April.

Container volumes at West Coast ports plummeted 24 percent in the first two months of the year compared to 2014 due work slowdowns by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, marine terminal congestion and the diversion of cargo to other ports.

Truck turn times in Los Angeles-Long Beach are slowly improving from the dark days of November and December, but numbers released Tuesday by the Harbor Trucking Association of Southern California show the average truck visit to the harbor in February was still 50 percent longer than a year prior.

More than five weeks after West Coast longshoremen and waterfront employers reached a tentative contract, the Port of Oakland is still trying to regain the vessel calls it lost.

West Coast ports continue to reduce vessel and container backlogs that built up during the nine months of labor negotiations, with the ports of Oakland, Seattle and Tacoma progressing at a faster pace than Los Angeles-Long Beach.

Terminal operators and equipment managers on the West Coast intend to form a discussion agreement that will allow them to work with industry stakeholders such as shipping lines, motor carriers and railroads to reduce congestion and improve cargo velocity.

Earlier this year before the three major equipment-leasing companies formed a gray chassis pool in Los Angeles-Long Beach, Direct ChassisLink Inc. was positioning 300 chassis into a marine terminal in Long Beach while Flexi-Van Leasing was pulling 280 of them out of the same facility. Thanks to the gray, or neutral chassis pool that went into operation on Mach 1, that type of inefficiency has very quickly become a thing of the past.

APL issued an upbeat customer advisory Wednesday about conditions at Los Angeles-Long Beach, saying that while many ships remain at anchor off the coast, the pace of cargo handling is noticeably picking up.