Western Railroad Discussion > WSJ: LA area port congestion eases

The Wall Street Journal reports fewer ships are waiting to be unloaded. More boxes are being moved off the docks quicker.

No victory lap, though. Lunar New year means Chinese exporters took a break, warehouses are still full, dock workers are still Contracting Covid

Paywall

https://www.wsj.com/articles/container-ship-backup-at-southern-california-ports-is-receding-11644523945?mod=hp_minor_pos13

Posted from Android

that's interesting because i have not noticed any increase in e/b container traffic on the seligman sub...........

66

Lunar New Year? One of two annual slack adjusters.

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> The Wall Street Journal reports fewer ships are
> waiting to be unloaded.

ROFLMAO

Yep, political move by LA/LB politicians to have the ships stage further out off shore is working for the media.

There are still a lot of ships waiting to unload, they are just further off shore and out of sight.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/22 08:06 by jst3751.

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What a joke!!!!  All one has to do is look at all of the ships sitting off the coast of San Diego all the way to the south of Ensenada, to know that the ports are still plugged.  All they did was move the problem out of sight.  Typical politicians... they think they're smarter than everyone else.

No worries...maybe NEXT YEAR'S Christmas product lines will hit the store's shelves on time (sarcasm included)....

Posted from Android

While in the minority there are a few in the maritime industry who suggest cross docking is also responsible for the slow down in movement of products east from the ports. I'm guessing this has something to do with the lack of warehousing and repackaging.  Or maybe this could mean something else.  Would be nice to get "Rob_l" to comment on this...

Allen

bradleymckay Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> While in the minority there are a few in the
> maritime industry who suggest cross docking is
> also responsible for the slow down in movement of
> products east from the ports. I'm guessing this
> has something to do with the lack of warehousing
> and repackaging.  Or maybe this could mean
> something else.  Would be nice to get "Rob_l" to
> comment on this...
>
> Allen

Last week I had a chance to view the Evergreen LA Port terminal. While there are still more boxes stacked than there were 2 years ago, there is less than there were in October 2021. Docked time for container vessels however is still high. I saw 4 container ships moored but not being worked.

OK, I will chime in.

For a very long time I have harping on the shift of imports from inland movement in marine containers to inland movement in domestic boxes (containers and trailers).

This trend has been on-going since the 1990s. In 2015 the total cubic volume of imports leaving the LA Basin via rail in domestic boxes exceeded the total cubic volume leaving in marine containers via rail; I am sure that will be true in all subsequent years. Because total imports have been growing almost every year, the marine box volume on rail did not decline sharply, but its growth rate slowed dramatically. At some point it will start a permament decline. It may have already peaked.

I think the shift has speeded up because of two important factors: (1) The pandemic speeded up the shift of consumer shopping from brick-and-mortar stores to on-line shopping. In many cases, the consumer pays for the shipping. So importers will put the imports in an e-commerce fulfillment center in Sou Cal, wait for the consumers to buy, then ship inland on the customer's nickel. Or they will allocate the imports to different regional fulfillment centers. Either way, the imports get out of marine boxes in Sou Cal. (2) The huge backlog has put many goods on allocation. Each marine container has one type of good or one family of similar goods in it. When it finally makes it through the blockade, the importer wants to allocate the contents across many geographies in order to be fair to waiting customers, rather than sending the whole thing to just one geography which "discriminates" against the customers in all the other geographies. So again, the goods get out of the marine box in Sou Cal.

This year, total imports are up over last year, but rail volume of marine containers is down. i am not sure that volume will ever recover.

This is a message that the ocean carriers, the ports, the railroads and even the environmentalists do not like to hear.

The ocean carriers don't like to hear it because if the goods stay in the marine box moving inland, they get paid for it (they pay their railroad subcontractors to haul it, but the ocean carriers sell the transportation). If the goods get out of the marine box, the carriers make no money on inland movement.

The ports make their money off the ocean carriers. Because their customers don't like to hear it, the ports don't like to hear it.

The railroads have negotiated better deals with the ocean carriers than they have negotiated with the IMCs, so they make more money on the marine stack trains than on the domestic stack trains. So they don't like to hear it.

The environmentalists see all the truck traffic in Sou Cal and press for on-dock rail to get the imports through without any drays. So they don't want to hear it. What they don't realize: trans-loading to domestic boxes (the contents of the 3 marine boxes fit in two domestic boxes) reduces destination drays by 33%; and the domestic stack train weighs 2 tons less per TEU of imports and has 17% more freight per unit train length than the marine stack train. So trans-loading actually reduces total global emissions, and the envoronmentalists are actually working against planet earth.

Best regards,

Rob L.

bradleymckay Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> While in the minority there are a few in the
> maritime industry who suggest cross docking is
> also responsible for the slow down in movement of
> products east from the ports. I'm guessing this
> has something to do with the lack of warehousing
> and repackaging.  Or maybe this could mean
> something else.  Would be nice to get "Rob_l" to
> comment on this...
>
> Allen



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/22 18:04 by rob_l.

Thanks for that analysis. Lots of moving parts.

Posted from Android