California’s massive container-ship traffic jam is still really jammed
Peak shipping season is coming soon and the “parking lot” of container ships stuck at anchor off the coast of California is still there, with Oakland surpassing Los Angeles/Long Beach as the epicenter of congestion.
Shipping giant Maersk warned in a customer advisory on Wednesday that Los Angeles and Long Beach “remain strained with vessel wait times averaging between one to two weeks.” But it said “the situation is even more dire at the Port of Oakland, where wait times now extend up to three weeks.”
West Coast port delays are having severe fallout for liner schedules. Congestion in California equates to canceled voyages as ships can’t get back to Asia in time to load cargo. Even as U.S. import demand soars, the effective capacity in the trans-Pacific trade is being sharply curtailed by voyage cancellations.
There’s No Boba Shortage in LA, but the East Coast Faces Major Supply Issues
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Earlier this month, Boba Guys’ Instagram account shared a video warning of a potential industry-wide boba storage: “Some boba shops are already out. Others will run out in the next few weeks,” Boba Guys co-founder Bin Chen said in the video. Naturally, news of the impending “boba-pocalypse” went viral. The possibility of a shortage made it difficult for some smaller tea shops in Los Angeles to stock up on boba, with bigger brands and chains buying up whatever they could.
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The size of these boats which are two to three times the size of ships from over a decade ago are also a contributing factor to this backlog as they use more resources and manpower to unload, according to Louttit. Brittany Chang/Insider Brittany Chang/Insider As more Americans get vaccinated, businesses reopen and the economy strengthens, consumers continue to purchase goods at a dizzying pace, Gene Seroka, the executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said in a news release. Brittany Chang/Insider Brittany Chang/Insider
This congestion may be unique to California waters, but consumers around the US could soon begin seeing the consequences of this backlog.
With about two dozen cargo ships sitting anchored off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in Southern California s San Pedro Bay this week, local media said it showed the United States was facing a supply chain crisis.
In Seal Beach, a coastal city neighboring Long Beach, Xinhua found on Sunday morning there were at least 20 ships at anchor in the bay area awaiting available berths at the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) and Port of Long Beach (POLB), which form the largest container port complex in the country.
According to the data released by the Marine Exchange of Southern California, a service that monitors port traffic and operations, another six ships were scheduled to arrive this weekend and join the other 20 ships which had been waiting outside the ports for a week.