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By Lidia Yan, CEO at NEXT Trucking
It was a rough start to the year for shippers and carriers around the world.
While the freeing of the Ever Given container ship in the Suez Canal in March caused the biggest headache in port congestion, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach — the two biggest gateways for U.S. imports — are not far behind. Both ports hit unusual levels of congestion in recent months, with nearly 40 cargo vessels anchoring for an average of 7.5 days, awaiting berths to safely and securely unload and load cargo.
Because of this bottleneck, carriers had to anchor or use nearby drift zones for the first time since 2004 in order to redirect maritime traffic into neighboring ports. In fact, some terminal operators downright refused to berth ships due to the lack of space for unloaded containers.
The high volumes of containers coming into North America’s leading seaport, the Port of Los Angeles, have caused major disruptions across organizations and the global supply chain.
For example, the average container/chassis dwell time has increased from three to seven days and relief from the mounting bottleneck is nowhere in sight. The port processed a record-breaking 799,315 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in February 2021, a 47% increase from February 2020, when global trade nearly ground…
