Getting a box delivered on time is no better than a coin toss. “The impact is massive.” Deteriorating reliability, rising rollsĪs previously reported by American Shipper, global schedule reliability has collapsed to around 50% versus normal levels of 70%-80%.
“It is the equivalent of pulling five full trans-Pacific services out of action as long as you have these waiting times,” he said. “As of last week, there were almost 300,000 TEUs waiting to get offloaded,” Poskus added. “They can’t service the ships fast enough, which has led to waiting times of 10-14 days or even more, depending on the terminal,” said Nerijus Poskus, global head of ocean freight at Flexport. Including all ship types, there were 55 vessels at anchorages - a new record, with all Los Angeles/Long Beach anchorages full and all contingency anchorages off Huntington also full. According to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, there were 33 container ships at anchorages and 26 at berths on Wednesday. They are an operational necessity.” No letup in San Pedro Bay traffic jamĪt any given time since the beginning of this year, there have been around 30 container ships stuck waiting at anchorages in San Pedro Bay offshore of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. scheduled sailings by month (Chart: eeSea)ĭuring a webinar presented by freight forwarder Flexport on Tuesday, Seaintelligence Consulting CEO Lars Jensen explained, “When you have all the vessels stuck waiting outside ports, they cannot make the return journey so they cannot start the sailing they were supposed to do. This is despite continued high cargo demand. The data as of Wednesday reveals an 11% dip in Asia-U.S. The eeSea platform provides complimentary access to real-time blank sailing data. That means the pileup in Asia will take even longer to clear.
But the congestion in Los Angeles and Long Beach is leaving carriers short of ships. Carriers initially opted to keep CNY sailings largely intact in order to clear the export pileup at Chinese ports. “These are not ‘pull-out-capacity blanks.’ These are ‘need-to-get-back-on-schedule blanks,’” Sundboell told American Shipper.Ĭarriers usually blank sailings at this time of year due to lower exports during the Chinese New Year (CNY) holiday. “Schedule reliability is horrible,” said Simon Sundboell, founder of eeSea, a company that analyzes ship schedules. Hapag-Lloyd is a member of THE Alliance along with Ocean Network Express (ONE), Yang Ming and HMM. “It is important to emphasize that vessels will not be idling at any time and we will perform as many voyages as possible,” stressed the carrier. According to Hapag-Lloyd, “as our fleets are fully deployed and stretched beyond capacity, this is regretfully currently not an option.”Īs a result, Hapag-Lloyd has blanked 19 sailings in February. When ships fall behind schedule due to long waits in port, carriers normally add “recovery vessels” to take their place and keep weekly services going. Sailings are now being “blanked” (canceled) not because of lack of demand, but because of lack of tonnage as ships are stuck awaiting berths. Massive port congestion in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is forcing ocean carriers to take extreme measures. trans-Pacific trade have hit their limit. It’s official: Container volumes in the Asia-U.S.
Coast Guard aerial video of container-ship traffic jam released: see link here)