Western Railroad Discussion > Top Ten US Ports and World Ports-2008

As per the Journal of Commerce August 3, 2009 listed below are the top ten U.S. Ports and world ports measured by laden TEUS exports and imports combined for ytd 2008.

Ports of U.S.
1. Los Angeles TEUS 5,678,557
2. Long Beach TEUS 4,619,683
3. New York-N.J. TEUS 4,069,291
4. Georgia Ports TEUS 2,121,072
5. Virginia Ports TEUS 1,663,366
6. Houston TEUS 1,407,251
7. Oakland TEUS 1,398,313
8. South Carolina TEUS 1.333.057
9. Tacoma TEUS 1,133,057
10.Seattle TEUS 1,083,991

World Ports ( represented in millions)
1. Singapore TEUS 29.97
2. Shanghai TEUS 27.98
3. Hong Kong TEUS 24.49
4. Shenzen TEUS 21.40
5. Busan, S. Korea TEUS 13.45
6. Dubia TEUS 11.83
7. Ningo-Zhousan, China TEUS 11.23
8. Guangzhou Harbor China TEUS 11.00
9. Rotterdam TEUS 10.78
10 Qingdao, China TEUS 10.32

Los Angeles is number 16 and Long Beach is number 17

FYI

Dale Smith



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/09 13:05 by mearsksealand.

Well LA/LB would be a bit closer to the top 10 world list if they just combined the two... They share the same water anyway, the two ports are right next to each other with nothing more than a chain link fence between the two in some areas! Interesting lists though.

Mr. MRL

You could say the same thing about Seattle and Tacoma in a way. There are so many combined ports on this list already that it kinda skews the placement. The other thing that is kinda hard to believe is how high the Asian port numbers are. Some people like to say the Americans are the worlds foremost consumers, that we consume the majority of the products produced. But these numbers tend to dispel that notion. Just one of those Asian ports could handle the top ten US ports.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

The Port of Singapore is primarily a transhipment point. Very little actually ends up there. Feeder vessels from all over Asia bring containers to consolidate on large ocean going ships. For that reason you really can't compare that port with one which acts as a portal for goods, both inbound and outbound.

Similarly, Hong Kong and Shenzen combined are almost 46 milion TEU. They're part of the same metro area, ports are about 20 miles from each other, by far the busiest in the world.
Interesting #s, thanks for sharing
Ted in WA

But how many people live in those Singapore containers? PS- Interesting post.

Many Americans tend to think of Chinese export traffic as entirely US centered, but it isn't.

The US is China's biggest export market, by far, but it also ships to the EU (about 60% of what it ships the US), to Japan (about 30%), to Korea, and, increasingly to India, South America, the middle East, and to Africa.

Table 8: http://www.uschina.org/statistics/tradetable.html

I saw some numbers a few years ago that indicated Chicago is by far the busiest container-handling city in North America and one of the busiest in the world. At the time, Chicago handled about 80 million TEUs to 20 million for the combined ports of LA and Long Beach. Many, if not virtually all, major ports in North America feed containers into Chicago.

galenadiv Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I saw some numbers a few years ago that indicated
> Chicago is by far the busiest container-handling
> city in North America and one of the busiest in
> the world. At the time, Chicago handled about 80
> million TEUs to 20 million for the combined ports
> of LA and Long Beach. Many, if not virtually all,
> major ports in North America feed containers into
> Chicago.

I think the port statistics in the first post have to do with maritime container traffic only, while the Chicago number would be a much larger number comprising maritime and domestic traffic.

That being said, I found some 2007-2008 world statistics that are different from the first post. In them, Los Angeles was at 7.85 million TEU in 2008, down from 8.35 million TEU in 2007.

Ray

Remember these are laden import and export TEUs--does not count empties

Dale Smith