FourKites data on Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach show import spike

Glenn Koepke, SVP of Customer Success at FourKites noted in a release that the San Pedro ports’ cargo load count:

• The load count in the months of July and August at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles have witnessed an all-time high for the current year.
• The number of import shipments started increasing from the month of June and reached its peak in July and August.
  
• The number of import shipments at the Port of LA was observed in July was 5 times higher than the previous 6 months historic average.
  
• The number of import shipments at the Port of Long Beach in the month of August was observed to be 3 times higher than the previous 6 months’ average.
  
• The month of September saw these numbers moving toward the historic average, and is now roughly 2.5 times more than the historic average for both ports.

  

Further the charts indicated that berthing delays:

• The average time to berth the shipments after arrival to the destination stop reached around 6 days in the month of August for both ports, which was the second-highest time after a spike in delays in February, when the onset of the pandemic and panic-buying wreaked havoc on global supply chains.
  
• The month of September is seeing berthing delays approaching the historic average of 3 days.

  

Additionally, The Port of Seattle also saw an unusual increase in the berthing delays during the month of August. This might be related to the congestion as the authorities might have diverted the ships to other ports to avoid congestion on the west coast.

The load count increased by 7 times, as compared to the last 6 months average load count, and berthing delays increased to 7 days from the usual berthing delay of 3 days.