Import containers being shipped by rail are moving out too slowly
Greg MillerFollow on TwitterSunday, July 3, 2022 4 minutes read
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At the height of last year’s “will Christmas be canceled?” supply chain freak-out, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach — with the Biden administration’s backing — proposed a highly controversial fee on import containers that sat too long in terminal yards.
The mere threat of this fee, announced on Oct. 25 for implementation Nov. 15, seemed to initially chase more boxes out the gates, as designed. Every week since then, like clockwork, the ports have cited progress and announced that the fee enforcement would be postponed until the following week.
Now, the container dwell numbers are getting worse and becoming increasingly hard to sugarcoat.
Could that proposed fee — $100 a day for each container dwelling too long, compounding an additional $100 per day thereafter — ever actually be charged?
LA/LB long-dwelling boxes doubled since February
The two ports said last Friday that the fee would be delayed again due to a combined 31% drop in aging containers since late October. But if you run the numbers with a different start date you’ll get a very different picture.
The combined number of import containers at both ports dwelling for nine days or more has more than doubled since early February, to 48,932 as of Wednesday.
This is almost exactly the number of containers dwelling on Los Angeles and Long Beach on Nov. 15 (48,905), back on the day the fee plan was originally to be implemented.
The fee plan is designed to compel importers to pull boxes from the terminals and free up space. The concern is that the cure will be worse than the disease. During the inaugural meeting of the National Shipping Advisory Council in October, one member called the fee plan “catastrophic,” another called it “crazy” and another warned it would “cause more problems than we already have.”
Maersk warned a month ago that “the likelihood of the administration implementing the fee has risen significantly.” It still hasn’t happened, but American Shipper was told Wednesday that the fee is being reassessed weekly and could be implemented at any point.
Long-dwelling containers in Long Beach
The proposed fee would target import containers moving by truck that dwell nine or more days at the terminals and containers moving by rail dwelling six or more days. (Long Beach publicly discloses data on import containers dwelling nine days or more, segregated by truck and rail, but not rail-only containers dwelling six to eight days.)
As of Wednesday, Long Beach had 8,992 containers on its terminals for nine days or more on the trucking side, and 11,509 on the rail side, for a total of 20,501. Long Beach pointed out that this is down 22% versus Oct. 28, when it began compiling the numbers.
Sounds like a success. But move the start date just a few days forward and Long Beach’s gain disappears. As far back as Nov. 5, there were fewer containers dwelling nine days or more in Long Beach than there are now. The current count is 25% higher than on Nov. 20, over seven months ago, when there were 16,398 containers dwelling nine days or more at Long Beach.
The Long Beach count hit a low of 9,928 containers dwelling nine days or more on Jan. 28. It’s now more than double that.
Data from Long Beach clearly shows the culprit for the resurgence. Long-dwelling containers moving by truck are around half what they were seven months ago. In contrast, containers moving by rail are piling up, rising steadily since March.
Long-dwelling containers in Los Angeles
The Port of Los Angeles had a total of 70,290 import containers in its terminals as of Wednesday. It pointed out that this is down 26% versus Oct. 24, the day before the announcement of the fee plan. There were 28,431 containers dwelling nine or more days on Wednesday, down 24% from Oct. 24.
Sounds impressive, but yet again, it’s a matter of which dates you compare. In late January, the total number of import containers at the Port of Los Angeles hit a low of around 40,000. It’s up 76% since then.
The number of import containers in Los Angeles dwelling nine days or more sank to around 10,000 in early February. It’s now almost triple that.
‘It’s all about the rail’
As with Long Beach, rail delays are the major culprit in Los Angeles. On Wednesday, 17,010 of the containers dwelling nine or more days — 60% of the total — were on-dock rail containers waiting to load.
Of all the import containers on the terminal, 28,984 or 41% of the total were rail-bound containers.
Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said during a press conference on June 14 that there are normally around 9,000 on-dock rail containers at the terminals, less than a third of the current tally, and there would normally be no on-dock rail containers dwelling nine days or more.
Los Angeles’ rail cargo has increased sixfold since February. Asked about the ongoing issue of long-dwelling containers, Seroka said, “Right now it’s all about the rail. We’re working all out to catch up with this rail cargo.
“If we were to strip out [the rail effect] and bring the rail product back to where it normally should be, we’d have no problem with aging containers and we’d be moving imports fluidly through this port complex.”
