Challenged by severe winter weather in the Canadian interior and a backlog of containers from longshore labor disruption in late 2024, marine terminal operators at the Port of Vancouver continue to grapple with a problem that seems ever-present: extended dwell times for containers moving inland by rail.
Railroads normally run fewer, shorter trains during Canadian winters, but this season’s weather restrictions were more severe than usual, which has caused eastbound containers to pile up on the docks over the past three months.
“Inclement weather across much of Canada in February, including a deep freeze in the prairies and a severe snowstorm in Ontario, affected rail turnaround times and reduced railcar availability on the West Coast,” a spokesperson for the Port of Vancouver told the Journal of Commerce.
“Shorter trains mean more people and equipment are required to move the same amount of goods,” a spokesperson for Canadian National Railway (CN) said.
The average rail container dwell time in March at Vancouver’s four container terminals was 7.7 days. While that was marginally down from 8.5 days in February and 8.3 days in January, according to port statistics, it’s well above the four to five days terminal operators on North America’s West Coast say they can live with in order to keep rail dwells at their facilities manageable.
Infor Nexus pegged March rail dwells at seven days, down from nearly 10 days in February.
Vancouver’s dwell times have been above five days since last November.
Importers in Canada and the US say rail congestion at Vancouver is a given during the peak shipping season in August through October, when the port and inland rail networks must handle greater volumes than they are designed to handle. But Vancouver has struggled with extended rail dwells over the past several months, well beyond the end of the traditional peak season.
A forwarder said it has taken him as long as 30 days to retrieve some of his containers from Vancouver, saying whether it’s a weather event or labor action or a peak season surge in imports, excessive rail container dwell times are a condition he’s come to expect at the port, calling it “business as usual.”
Stakeholders, however, say they see signs of improvement.
A spokesperson for Canadian Pacific Kansas City Southern (CPKC) said its rail container dwell times are improving at the Vanterm and Centerm terminals in Vancouver. According to the port’s website, CPKC’s rail container dwell at Vanterm on Monday was three to five days, with the average Centerm dwell at zero to three days. Still, CPKC’s dwells were seven days or longer at the Deltaport terminal.
“Driven by dwell improvements at Centerm and Vanterm terminals, we are seeing elevated volumes that we are now moving with improved network and overall supply chain performance following weeks of sustained extreme winter temperatures that impacted operations across the Canadian supply chain,” the CPKC spokesman said.
CN is targeting later this spring for a return to normal at its operations.
“Assuming no further weather impacts, CN anticipates the trend line for container dwell to continue downward through the early spring, getting back to more normal dwell times by mid-late spring,” the CN spokesperson said.
The Vancouver spokesperson said as April progresses, rail business is returning to seasonal norms, “with on-dock volumes and dwell times both trending positively.”
Source: JOC