CONGESTION at us East and West Coast ports this fall is expected to deteriorate fuelled by unreliable vessel arrivals, chassis shortages, and rail service degradation, according to IHS Media.
Terminal managers warned the situation will get worse unless containers are moved more swiftly from terminals to local warehouses.
'The root cause of the problem is at the warehouses. The cargo on our terminals needs to start moving,' Sal Ferrigno, vice president of SSA Terminals in Long Beach, told the Intermodal Association of North America Expo in Long Beach.
Rob Cannizzaro, vice president of operations at Virginia International Terminals, blamed a shortage of labour at warehouses, and said with the supply chain choked at those facilities, the congestion has backed up to marine terminals, which is slowing ship operations.
August marked the 14th consecutive month of record or near-record US imports from Asia, according to PIERS. Asian imports in August totaled 2.4 million TEU, up 17.8 per cent from August 2020. Last August was the second-busiest month of the year for imports from Asia, surpassed only by October.
Port and terminal managers across the country concede that the unprecedented surge in imports, which they predict will continue into the first quarter of 2022, caught them by surprise, as neither they nor their inland supply chain partners have been able to ramp up their assets quickly enough to handle the spike in cargo.
'We're handling volumes we expected to handle five years from now,' said John Poelma, managing director of APM Terminals in New Jersey.
The bottlenecks in the inland supply chain have made it extremely difficult for terminal operators to plan their operations each day, and the problem is made worse by severe schedule degradation in the eastbound trans-Pacific.
Tremendous fluctuations in vessel arrivals from week to week result in vessel bunching, rendering meaningless the operational plans used by terminals that are typically formulated the night before a vessel's scheduled arrival.
'When the best [shipping] line is 45 per cent on-time, it's hard to plan in that environment,' Mr Poelma said.
Excessive container dwells on the marine terminals and at the warehouses have created an artificial chassis shortage at ports on both coasts, the terminal operators said.
In a port complex such as New York-New Jersey that is heavily dependent on trucking, excessive chassis street dwell times at the warehouses have compromised the ability of drayage operators to shuttle inbound loads to the warehouses and return empty containers to the terminals, said Brian Kobza, director of GCT USA. He noted that containers with import loads are sitting on chassis in the warehouse yards for days.
In Southern California, the Pool of Pools that is managed by the three largest chassis providers is once again reporting climbing street dwell times after experiencing some relief earlier this summer.
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Terminal managers warned the situation will get worse unless containers are moved more swiftly from terminals to local warehouses.
'The root cause of the problem is at the warehouses. The cargo on our terminals needs to start moving,' Sal Ferrigno, vice president of SSA Terminals in Long Beach, told the Intermodal Association of North America Expo in Long Beach.
Rob Cannizzaro, vice president of operations at Virginia International Terminals, blamed a shortage of labour at warehouses, and said with the supply chain choked at those facilities, the congestion has backed up to marine terminals, which is slowing ship operations.
August marked the 14th consecutive month of record or near-record US imports from Asia, according to PIERS. Asian imports in August totaled 2.4 million TEU, up 17.8 per cent from August 2020. Last August was the second-busiest month of the year for imports from Asia, surpassed only by October.
Port and terminal managers across the country concede that the unprecedented surge in imports, which they predict will continue into the first quarter of 2022, caught them by surprise, as neither they nor their inland supply chain partners have been able to ramp up their assets quickly enough to handle the spike in cargo.
'We're handling volumes we expected to handle five years from now,' said John Poelma, managing director of APM Terminals in New Jersey.
The bottlenecks in the inland supply chain have made it extremely difficult for terminal operators to plan their operations each day, and the problem is made worse by severe schedule degradation in the eastbound trans-Pacific.
Tremendous fluctuations in vessel arrivals from week to week result in vessel bunching, rendering meaningless the operational plans used by terminals that are typically formulated the night before a vessel's scheduled arrival.
'When the best [shipping] line is 45 per cent on-time, it's hard to plan in that environment,' Mr Poelma said.
Excessive container dwells on the marine terminals and at the warehouses have created an artificial chassis shortage at ports on both coasts, the terminal operators said.
In a port complex such as New York-New Jersey that is heavily dependent on trucking, excessive chassis street dwell times at the warehouses have compromised the ability of drayage operators to shuttle inbound loads to the warehouses and return empty containers to the terminals, said Brian Kobza, director of GCT USA. He noted that containers with import loads are sitting on chassis in the warehouse yards for days.
In Southern California, the Pool of Pools that is managed by the three largest chassis providers is once again reporting climbing street dwell times after experiencing some relief earlier this summer.
SeaNews Turkey
