WASHINGTON—A sampling of United States’ ports handled a cumulative 1.27 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) of container traffic in March, according to the May edition of the Port Tracker report, which was released last week by the National Retail Federation, a national retail trade association, and Global Insight, a provider of economic and financial information.
The 1.27 million TEUs handled in March represent a 17.4 percent increase in February and is up 20 percent from March 2005. The reports authors portend that volume will rise to a peak level of 1.45 million TEUs in August, which would be a 9.4 percent gain from August 2005. In September, volume is expected to decline to 1.4 million TEUs, but that would still be 4.5 percent over the output from September 2005.
Ports surveyed in the report include: Los Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland, Tacoma, Seattle, New York/New Jersey, Hampton Roads, Charleston, and Savannah.
With volumes up on a monthly and yearly basis, port congestion can be viewed as one less thing shippers may have to worry about, Global Insight economist Paul Bingham told Logistics Management.
“From today’s perspective, the situation at the ports is positive with respect to congestion,” said Bingham. “There is no significant congestion or delay at any of the surveyed ports now or projected during the next six months. Shippers have plenty to worry about these days, but congestion delays at these U.S. ports are not among them.”
Chief among the things shippers are concerned about are port trucking and congestion at the Panama Canal, but Bingham said they should not result in serious terminal or network congestion as shippers prep for the summer shipping season.
Bingham added that shippers should be confident that the conditions that led to congestion in 2004 are not being repeated in 2006, and the risk of port congestion over the next six months is low.
“Several participants in the port industry have taken steps to avoid repeating the conditions that led to the congestion in 2004,” said Bingham. “Terminals have reduced ‘free time,’ and they and others have been more strict about enforcing demurrage charges for containers left sitting around, which has helped increase throughput velocity at terminals, effectively adding capacity.”
Other factors include how the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles have benefited from the adoption of the PierPASS OffPeak program of daytime terminal gate surcharges and the introduction of night and Saturday gate hours for trucks, among others.
Bingham said that the volume growth in March reflects the rebound from the traditional depth of the slow season in March as well as the earlier Chinese New Year this year, which slows cargo shipments from Asia while Asian factories are on holiday.
As for the future, month-to-month volume will continue but not likely at the rapid rate from February to March, according to Bingham. One reason for this, he cited, is that container trade volume is not expected to grow that fast for the year as a whole, because the U.S. consumer is not expected to accelerate containerized goods import purchases over the remainder of 2006 compared with last year, due to rising interest rates, lower home-equity appreciation, lower new home sales and higher energy prices.
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