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Truckers tired of taking blame for congestion crisis at California ports, by Clarissa Hawes

Posted on November 4, 2021 | Leave a comment

There’s plenty of blame to go around for California ports’ bottlenecks, but truckers think they’re getting way more than their share. From Clarissa Hawes at freightwaves.com:

California port truckers say there’s not a driver shortage — just look at the lines

California port truckers say they aren’t to blame for supply chain chaos. Photo: Jim Allen/FreightWaves

As Miguel Silva surveyed his truck yard just outside the Port of Oakland last week, he pointed to shipping containers filled with corn and soybean seed bound for impoverished nations in Africa and elsewhere around the globe.

Silva said his customers’ genetically modified seed, which can’t be reused because it’s engineered in a lab, should have been loaded on a cargo ship weeks ago to arrive in time for the planting season.

However, appointment times can be scarce. The terminal operators’ push toward automation, which Silva and other trucking company owners say isn’t always reliable, requires drivers to check for appointment times day and night and on weekends to see if more time slots open up.

Miguel Silva, president of Intermodal Logistics

“I have customers calling me daily, telling me to name my price, that money is no object, but to please, just pull their containers,” Silva, president of Intermodal Logistics at the Port of Oakland, told FreightWaves. “I wish it was that simple.”

Driver shortage?

Silva and other trucking companies dispute the widely reported message that a driver shortage is largely to blame for the port congestion issues in California.

During a five-day trip to the major ports in California, FreightWaves interviewed multiple company executives who said they were actually shedding drivers because of the lack of consistent work due to port congestion bottlenecks, equipment and efficiency issues.

Port truckers told FreightWaves on Monday that the Oakland International Container Terminal (OICT) website had been down since the previous day, so trucking companies weren’t able to obtain the vessel export receiving list. OICT, the port’s largest stevedoring terminal, is owned by SSA International.

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Flexport: Trans-Pacific deteriorating, brace for shipping ‘tsunami’, by Greg Miller

Posted on April 28, 2021 | Leave a comment

Between Covid-19 restrictions and massive fiat debt issuance, supply lines are frayed and the effects are ratcheting throughout the economy. From Greg Miller at freightwaves.com:

US importers face even more extreme delays ahead as container capacity maxes out

The number of container ships stuck at anchor off Los Angeles and Long Beach is down to around 20 per day, from 30 a few months ago. Does this mean the capacity crunch in the trans-Pacific market is finally easing? Absolutely not, warned Nerijus Poskus, vice president of global ocean at freight forwarder Flexport. “It’s not getting better. It’s getting worse,” he told American Shipper in an interview on Monday.

“What I’m seeing is unprecedented. We are seeing a tsunami of freight,” he reported.

“For the month of May, everything on the trans-Pacific is basically sold out. We had one client who needed something loaded in May that was extremely urgent and who was ready to pay $15,000 per container. I couldn’t get it loaded — and we are a growing company that ships a lot of TEUs [twenty-foot equivalent units]. Price doesn’t always even matter anymore.”

Restocking driving volumes higher

Poskus said that trans-Pacific import volumes are still rising. He noted that January trans-Pacific imports were up 10% versus 2019 (comparisons to 2020 numbers are skewed by COVID) and 13.5% in February, then jumped 51% in March. “So, we’re now at 1.5 times pre-pandemic levels.”

With imports far outpacing retail sales growth, he attributed volumes to inventory restocking. “The restocking is actually affecting the trade even more than growth in demand. That tells me that this will last even longer. Let’s say U.S. consumer demand slows down in Q3 and Q4. That’s not expected, but even if it does, [capacity availability and rates] shouldn’t improve quickly, simply because of the huge restocking demand.”

Poskus also believes there is a growing export backlog piling up each day in Asia, awaiting available ship slots. If that backlog grows too big, he said, “I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen.”

As a result of the backlog and restocking demand, he thinks “prices will remain high and shipping will probably remain difficult for the rest of this year. And then after that, you have the peak for Chinese New Year in 2022.”

About to get even worse

He said that the situation today is the worst he’s witnessed — and he believes it’s about to get even more severe.