Prime Freight’s summary of a July 2022 report by FreightWaves. Read the original for the full story.
By late July 2022 the number of container ships queuing off North American ports had climbed back to a record, even though the well-known Los Angeles/Long Beach backlog had shrunk to 26 ships from a January peak of 109.
FreightWaves counted 153 waiting vessels, slightly more than at the January–February peak and 66% more than seven weeks earlier. This time most of the queue sat off the East and Gulf coasts, which accounted for about 62% of waiting ships. Savannah had the longest line at 43 ships, followed by Los Angeles/Long Beach, Houston, New York/New Jersey, Vancouver and Oakland.
Data from VesselsValue showed that waiting times varied widely between terminals, even within the same port. A logistics executive quoted in the report linked the shift to shippers hedging against a possible West Coast dockworker dispute by securing East Coast allocations during the 2022 contract season, which then overloaded those gateways.
What it meant for shippers
The congestion had moved rather than eased. Routing cargo away from one gateway can simply move the delay to another, so it pays to watch queue data for the actual port and terminal of discharge, not just national headlines, and to plan for longer, less predictable transits and free-time exposure on arrival.