Terminal operators at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are working to reduce a backlog of rail containers that have accumulated during two consecutive months of strong imports and are urging the railroads to send more cars to the ports to help them finish the job.<\/p>\n
The rail container inventory at Yusen Terminals in Los Angeles is double the normal volume, but the terminal has managed the load thus far. \u201cWe\u2019ve been backed up for four to five weeks, but there\u2019s no real congestion yet,\u201d said Yusen CEO Alan McCorkle.<\/p>\n
Still, McCorkle said he anticipates strong volumes for summer and fall as much of the discretionary cargo that left West Coast ports last year during the prolonged longshore contract negotiations returns.<\/p>\n
US imports from Asia in January and February handled in Los Angeles-Long Beach totaled 1,395,837 TEUs, an increase of 39.6% from the first two months of 2023, according to PIERS, a Journal of Commerce sister company within S&P Global.<\/p>\n
The two railroads that serve Los Angeles-Long Beach, BNSF and Union Pacific, say they are responding to the backlog in Southern California. BNSF and Union Pacific told the Journal of Commerce they are deploying more intermodal railcars to Los Angeles-Long Beach and are adjusting their operations so the terminals can clear out the rail containers and reduce dwell times.<\/p>\n
BNSF in February set a record for on-dock intermodal container moves in Los Angeles-Long Beach, beating its previous February volume record set in 2021, said Jon Gabriel, the railroad\u2019s vice president for innovation, service design and network strategy.<\/p>\n
BNSF is steadily reducing the rail container backlog, he said. \u201cWe will whittle away at it and should be completely current by the start of April,\u201d said Gabriel.<\/p>\n
BNSF has positioned \u201cready fleets\u201d of railcars at \u201cmultiple locations\u201d throughout the western US so it can deploy more equipment when needed at the ports and along its network, Gabriel said. \u201cWe have dedicated equipment that focuses only on the ports,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
In addition to the import surge in Los Angeles-Long Beach, operating conditions in the western part of the country were hampered by wildfires in Texas and flooding that occurred during multiple rainstorms on the West Coast, Gabriel noted.<\/p>\n
When some terminals in Los Angeles-Long Beach began to experience a surge of imports, Union Pacific \u201ctemporarily restricted westbound empty billing to help marine terminals manage higher import volumes,\u201d a UP spokesperson said. The temporary restriction was later lifted and UP isn\u2019t experiencing a railcar shortage this week, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Backlogs vary from terminal to terminal<\/p>\n
The rail container backlogs vary from terminal to terminal in Los Angeles-Long Beach. SSA Marine, which operates three terminals in Long Beach, has not experienced issues with rail containers so far this year. Due to its mix of ocean carriers, SSA does not handle as many intermodal containers as some terminals, said Ed DeNike, president of SSA Containers.<\/p>\n
Details please refer to JOC news.<\/em><\/p>\n Source:<\/p>\n Mongelluzzo, B. (2024b, March 19). BNSF, up working through rail container backlogs in Southern California<\/i>. Journal of Commerce. https:\/\/www.joc.com\/article\/bnsf-working-through-rail-container-backlogs-southern-california_20240319.html<\/p>\n Terminal operators at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are working to reduce a backlog of rail containers that have accumulated during two consecutive months of strong imports and are urging the railroads to send more cars to the ports to help them finish the job. The rail container inventory at Yusen Terminals …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[84,83],"class_list":["post-2934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-maritime","tag-us-ports"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2935,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2934\/revisions\/2935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}