July, 28, 2022

Freight forwarding industry challenges continue, and the Cargo services team remains dedicated to servicing our client accounts through continued communications and being accessible to answer questions. Stay close to your account manager and call if you need anything.

Vessel wait times at ports continue (see the chart to the right from HamburgSud), shipments moving inland are delayed, and the challenge to balance empty containers around the world remains.

Cargo owners in Dallas, Chicago, and Memphis are waiting longer for trains to arrive from Southern California. Here’s what’s happening.

BNSF is metering from Southern California to its BNSF Alliance terminal outside Dallas and BNSF Logistics Park Chicago in Joliet because there are more than 1,000 stacked containers at each facility. According to JOC.com, BNSF said it must coordinate how many containers are loaded on trains in Southern California with the available terminal space in Dallas and Chicago. BNSF repositioned cranes to make more containers accessible and is tapped ITS Conglobal yards in Dallas and Chicago to provide additional storage capacity. It also appears some shippers are using containers as mobile warehousing units.

On the east coast, the Port of New York and New Jersey is trying to get rid of the high number of empty containers. Marine terminal operators say their customers, the ocean carriers, are simply not removing what some estimates indicate are over 100,000 empty containers dwelling across New Jersey and beyond.

These conditions seem ripe for a container shortage to materialize in Asia at the outset of the annual holiday shipping season. But that is not happening. According to JOC.com, multiple ocean carriers, importers, and forwarders say shippers are having few, if any, difficulties obtaining container equipment in China and other points of origin in Asia.