Container ships keep joining the Southern California ports backup. Here’s why they can’t sail around the bottleneck.
There appears to be no sailing around the breathtaking backup of container ships off the jammed ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Big vessels are continuing to join the bottleneck, experts say, because shipping lines and their cargo customers have few options for resetting countless supply chains moving goods into the U.S. that have been constructed over decades around the critical San Pedro Bay gateway now staggered by the overflowing demand for imports.
The neighboring California ports are the principal seaborne gateway to the U.S. thanks to the growth of containerization over the past 60 years and an explosion in goods trade, particularly U.S. trade with China. Last year, the two ports handled the equivalent of 8.8 million loaded import containers, more than double the 3.9 million loaded boxes that arrived at the nation’s next busiest port at New York and New Jersey.
Despite some shortages, the availability of trucking equipment, warehouse space and labor is also far greater than at other ports. Executives say demand is so high that shippers are willing to take almost any route into the country to replenish inventories in time for the holidays. In recent weeks, the Port of Savannah has had 20 or more ships at anchor waiting for a berth. Griff Lynch, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority, said he expected the congestion would last for at least a couple of more weeks as shipping’s peak season continues.Companies that mitigated risk by shipping through alternative ports have found themselves snarled by the Southern California congestion in other ways, too.
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