Retailers and other importers who normally ship through the US East and Gulf coasts to destinations in the eastern half of the country say they have a short window to decide whether to begin rerouting goods through West Coast ports.<\/p>\n
Three shippers, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Journal of Commerce that if the International Longshoremen\u2019s Association (ILA) strike is resolved by the end of next week, they will likely continue to ship through East and Gulf coast ports. However, if it looks as though the strike will continue for more than a week, they must consider routings through US and Canadian West Coast ports, which would bring higher costs and possibly a limited capacity of the western railroads to handle a sustained surge of freight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to make a knee-jerk reaction,\u201d said an importer of furniture and home improvement merchandise who asked not to be identified. \u201cLet\u2019s see what happens, but once the pain of a week or two takes hold, there is the option to reroute through the West Coast.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those diversions \u201ccan make things worse from a cost and shipping cycle pattern,\u201d the logistics manager acknowledged.<\/p>\n
Jon Monroe, who serves as an adviser to non-vessel-operating common carriers (NVOs), said shippers have little choice but to divert freight if the strike drags on.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll have to transload through the West Coast,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is no Plan B.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rail capacity concerns<\/p>\n
Importers are concerned, however, about the capacity of the western railroads, inland rail hubs and distribution centers to handle a sustained surge of inland point intermodal (IPI) freight diverted from East and Gulf coast ports. They note that the BNSF and Union Pacific (UP) railroads are already handling record eastbound IPI volumes.<\/p>\n
For their part, BNSF and UP say they have been preparing for a strong peak season on the West Coast and have pre-positioned sufficient intermodal assets in Southern California and the Pacific Northwest to handle cargo diversions should the ILA strike continue for several weeks.<\/p>\n
In a Monday letter to Robert Primus, chairman of the US Surface Transportation Board, UP CEO Jim Vena said the railroad has established a \u201cbuffer of resources\u201d to handle its growing intermodal traffic this fall that has been driven in part by a shift of cargo from the East and Gulf coast ports to the West Coast.<\/p>\n
Details please refer to the JOC news.<\/em><\/p>\n Source:<\/p>\n Mongelluzzo, B. (2024, October 2). Window to divert strike-affected imports to west coast closing soon<\/i>. Journal of Commerce. https:\/\/www.joc.com\/article\/window-to-divert-strike-affected-imports-to-west-coast-closing-soon-5741052<\/p>\n Retailers and other importers who normally ship through the US East and Gulf coasts to destinations in the eastern half of the country say they have a short window to decide whether to begin rerouting goods through West Coast ports. Three shippers, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Journal of Commerce that if …<\/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-3093","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\/3093","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=3093"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3094,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3093\/revisions\/3094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ems.cohesionfreight.com.hk:8080\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}