Jason Parker, the company’s head of trucking, said, “We talked to trucking carriers throughout the market in LA and Oakland and the feeling was that they couldn’t support the volumes if they moved through Port Hueneme.”
The San Francisco-based company shifted gears, pulling 200 containers from Sea Booking and instead routing many of them to Los Angeles despite long wait times for cargo to unload.
“The upcoming two-week delay in the Los Angeles versus Huenem routing was less of a headache for customers,” said Mr. Parker.
The choice highlighted that shippers face difficult tradeoffs and new questions to avoid bottlenecks at major gateways by diverting goods through alternative ports. How do they get furniture, clothing, toys and other goods to stores and warehouses that are far from their established supply lines and have modest transport connections to other parts of the country?
Ports as small as Los Angeles and the neighboring Port of Long Beach, Calif., don’t have dozens of ships ashore waiting for berth space. The sites have long seen from shippers and freight forwarders, and have even brought in chartered ones. Ships from an increasing number of retailers renting the ship to take backup to get goods in stores for the holidays.
But most don’t have enough dock workers to unload cargo or a steady supply of trucks or warehouse space to handle large surges in cargo volumes, said Anthony Hatch, rail transportation analyst and principal at ABH Consulting.
“They make good stories,” said Mr. Hatch. “But they are all on the margins.”
Efforts have sent cargo to destinations still distant from established West Coast gateways and traditional container shipping trade lanes such as the ports of Seattle and Oakland, Calif. The Port of Portland, Ore., which lost regularly scheduled container service in 2016, has gained some operations and some charters this year. The Port of Hueneme, known mostly as an import gateway for Del Monte bananas, expects its first chartered container ship to arrive in November.
Ports on the East Coast such as Baltimore and Port Tampa Bay, Fla., are also operating crowd-free in an effort to woo container lines and their shipping customers.
The capacity of those ports pits against operations at Los Angeles and Long Beach. According to Beacon Economics, a research firm based in Los Angeles, that complex handled just over 6 million loaded inbound containers in the first seven months of the year, which was about 40% of all container imports that landed at U.S. ports at the time. .
The scale of the import business has created a vast network of trucking, rail, and warehousing operations aimed at importing into US markets, both for large consumer bases or distribution centers in Southern California and freight hubs reaching Chicago and other inland sites. . .
The port’s high profile as an import gateway has risen as retailers rush to restore inventories that were previously depleted in the pandemic, including between Los Angeles and Long Beach during the first seven months of the year. Helped to push about 1.1 million more containers through Medium. in the same period in 2019.
The influx of imports has created a stalemate of ships waiting offshore for berth space that has been on for the past year. According to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, between 60 and 70 ships are cruising this fall and reached a record 79 container ships as of Thursday.
However, moving goods from Asia to the Americas by going to alternative ports can take weeks, and introduce a plethora of new costs and complications.
Freight intermediary CH Robinson Worldwide Inc. spokeswoman Rachel Rowell said that moving the flow of goods requires equipment including container availability, space on a ship, truck capacity and chassis that allows trucks to carry containers. Is. They may all be in short supply.
“Transferring a full range is a more challenging test than a cab deciding which street to drive, which is why shifting ports is often not a preferred option and difficult to do at the last minute,” he said.
Freight forwarder Seiko Logistics moved to Portland, Ore., and Jacksonville, Fla., for frustrated importers. Ships are hired for. Each time, the firm has to lease sea containers for travel. It has leased additional space in Portland to manage the boxes and spent weeks finding local trucking companies capable of moving goods to distribution centers in Ohio and California.
Efforts have brought shipping costs up to $20,000 per box, which is not far from the high rates in today’s spot container shipping markets.
Moving cargo from containers to trucks isn’t ideal for importers, such as Jim Jones, senior manager of international logistics at RST Brands, a Salt Lake City-based furniture vendor who used the service. “The more times the product is touched, the more often you have the opportunity for damage and loss of things,” he said.
Still, Mr Jones said he would use the service again if supply-chain congestion continues to thwart his efforts to import furniture.
ITS Logistics moved truckers from Jacksonville, Fla. to Charleston, SC, to serve shippers who wanted to avoid the port of Savannah, Ga. The ships began backing offshore in August and September. Had done it. It has considered moving other drivers to Houston, but does not take such moves lightly.
“It’s a tax for the drivers and for us,” said Paul Brashier, vice president of drawage and intermodal at ITS Logistics, based in Reno, Nev. locally and they’re at home every night it’s a definite challenge.”
This story has been published without modification to the text from a wire agency feed
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