\u201cThe health of a terminal is driven by dwell times,\u201d Huisman told JOC.com in an interview Friday. APMT has terminals at Los Angeles; Elizabeth, New Jersey; Miami; and Mobile, Alabama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are congestion-free and can handle more cargo when it materializes. \u201cThere is no congestion. Zero. Zip. This gateway is fluid,\u201d Huisman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Declining import volumes are contributing to reduced congestion in Los Angeles-Long Beach. US imports from Asia moving through West Coast ports fell 1.69 percent this year through September<\/a>, according to PIERS, a JOC.com sister product within S&P Global, due in part to cargo diversions linked to protracted longshore contract negotiations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n New York-New Jersey should be back to normal cargo flow in two or three weeks as vessel backlogs are cleared and inland bottlenecks addressed, Huisman said. However, South Atlantic ports<\/a> and Houston are struggling to handle cargo diverted from the West Coast<\/a>, so clearing the vessel backlogs and terminal congestion in those spots may require a couple of months, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 20 percent-plus surge in cargo volumes that began with the COVID-19 recovery in mid-2020 forced ports to develop a new playbook to cope with the unprecedented port and inland supply chain congestion that resulted, Huisman said. However, the measures that ports and terminal operators introduced over the past two years to reduce container dwell times had both upside and downside impacts on their customers, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Huisman cited charging retailers and other importers fees for containers that dwell at terminals after free storage time expires. The fees, or even just the threat of fees, at ports on all three coasts have gone a long way toward reducing the stacks of long-dwelling containers, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have threatened to impose long-dwell fees<\/a> for more than a year, but have yet to do so. Nevertheless, the average dwell time for containers that leave Los Angeles-Long Beach marine terminals by truck was 3.5 days in October, or about half the dwell earlier in the year, according to the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, ports and terminal operators would prefer to achieve efficiency at their facilities through incentives rather than the threat of penalties, Huisman said.<\/p>\n\n\n Los Angeles-Long Beach and other gateways have been successful in encouraging importers to dray their containers to near-dock sites for temporary storage until the boxes can be accepted at warehouses and distribution centers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhen there is cargo sitting on the terminal, you need these relief valves, but they\u2019re expensive and they\u2019re inefficient,\u201d Huisman said. That is because importers must pay a drayperson twice, first to move the containers to the temporary storage yards and then to the warehouses when the containers can be accommodated.<\/p>\n\n\nCOVID forces ports to adopt a new playbook<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nNear-dock storage another weapon<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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