January 11, 2022 – A new report from American Shipper found that a record 105 container ships were recently waiting for berths in Los Angeles and Long Beach. Out of those waiting ships, only 16 were in port waters, and 89 were “loitering or slow steaming” in a newly designated Safety and Air Quality Zone, extending 150 miles to the west and 50 miles north and south.
Currently, there are more than three times as many container ships waiting to dock as there were this time last year. The vessels waiting for LA/LB berths last week had an aggregate capacity of 815,958 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU). American Shipper wrote, “To put that in perspective, that is 6% higher than the combined imports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in the entire month of November. It is 9% higher that the capacity of ships waiting offshore at the end of November (745,305 TEUs) and 28% higher than capacity off LA/LB at the beginning of November (637,329 TEUs).”
Eight ships were anchored in the San Fransisco Bay (with one more loitering in the Pacific), an additional four ships waiting in Seattle/Tacoma, and five ships anchored off the shores of Houston. Traffic jams are happening on both sides of the country, with ports in New York and New Jersey showing 11 container ships offshore, six container ships waiting off Charleston, South Carolina, four container ships waiting off Virginia, and two container ships reported off of Savannah, Georgia.
This brings the grand total of 146 container ships waiting to berth along all three U.S. coastlines.