This year through September, U.S. imports from Asia through West Coast ports fell 1.69 percent, and the drop in imports helped reduce Los Angeles-Long Beach congestion.
New York-New Jersey freight traffic should return to normal in two to three weeks, understand, as the ship backlog clears and inland bottlenecks are resolved. Meanwhile South Atlantic ports and Houston are struggling to process cargo transferred from the West Coast, so it could take months to clear the backlog of ships and jams on the docks at these locations.
the two largest U.S. container portals, Los Angeles-Long Beach and New York-New Jersey, are rapidly returning to pre-pandemic efficiency levels, it will take some time for ports along the South Atlantic and Gulf Coast to achieve more normal freight flow.
's COVID-19 recovery from mid -2020 saw cargo volumes surge by more than 20 percent, forcing ports to develop new action manuals to deal with the resulting unprecedented congestion in port and inland supply chains. Some ports will take measures such as charging for containers that stay at the terminal after the expiration of the free storage time. But port and terminal operators prefer to improve the efficiency of their facilities through incentives rather than the threat of penalties.
APMT Terminal is a terminal of the 2M Alliance. APMT, a company jointly owned by NYK Group and Macquarie Infrastructure Partners, operates one of the most comprehensive port networks in the world. The process requires the ocean carrier to coordinate efforts to store the containers designated for the stripping pile in a location on its ship, the terminal undertakes to allocate appropriate labor and equipment for the stripping pile, and the truck driver agrees to designate sufficient drivers to the operation.
Leo Huisman, managing director of the Americas region of APMT, said the main lessons learned in the past two years in dealing with congested terminals and ship backlogs are that ports may have to charge for long-stay containers, maintain near-dock and off-dock locations for temporary storage of containers, and establish stripping piles and unloading programs to reduce the time spent at marine terminals when congestion breaks out.