North American ports

Longshoremen at Port of Houston’s largest container terminal are digging through a backlog of containers and will work well into the weekend after two vessels collided on Monday in the Houston Ship Channel, forcing the closure of the facility and leaving dozens of ships stranded.

For days now, trucks in Southeast Virginia have queued in hour-long lines, blocking highway exits and struggling to enter Virginia International Gateway, once prided as the most efficient container terminal in the state.

Florida's Gov. Rick Scott says he is amping up efforts to bring new business to Florida's ports, and he is set on taking business from the U.S. West Coast.

The hottest market for drayage this week may not be Los Angeles or Long Beach but New York and New Jersey, where shippers and brokers are scrambling to find power to move containers and trucks are backing up in long lines outside some New York-New Jersey port terminals.

Container traffic at the Port of New York and New Jersey jumped 7.8 percent year-over-year in January, an all-time record for the month and a reflection of how some East Coast ports are benefiting from diversions away from congested ports on the opposite coast.

Mario Cordero, chairman of the U.S Federal Maritime Commission, told the Harbor Trucking Association in Long Beach and TPM last week there is reason to believe that terminal operators will do their best to improve turn times at U.S. ports this year.

The largest container terminal at the Port of Oakland was shut down at noon Wednesday when, according to management, International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 attempted to unilaterally impose manning requirements.

The Port of Virginia blamed a 1 percent year-over-year decrease in container traffic in February on severe winter weather and warned it was still grappling with cold and icy conditions that have brought down productivity.

The Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners agreed to extend until the end of September use of a near-dock storage yard for loaded and empty containers. The 30-acre site at the undeveloped Pier S facility was designated a temporary equipment storage yard and was schedule to close on March 31.

The Port of Houston’s largest container terminal was closed a second full day on Wednesday and so was part of the shipping channel it is served by, as authorities clear the mess caused by the Monday collision of two vessels.

U.S. retailers appear generally upbeat on their ability to deliver spring merchandise to stores, with some telling investors that U.S. West Coast port congestion has had minimal impact on their supply chains, according to earnings calls in recent weeks.

The Port of Houston’s largest container terminal was closed Tuesday until further notice after a tanker and bulk carrier collided on the Houston Ship Channel, causing a flammable chemical from the former to leak.

U.S. container exports plummeted 15 percent year-over-year in January as the West Coast labor standoff combined with a higher U.S. dollar and sluggish growth overseas created a sobering start to the new year for a key Obama administration priority

U.S. containerized imports this month are expected to rocket 16.9 percent year-over-year as West Coast ports make headway in reducing a massive cargo backlog caused by a labor showdown and retailers bring in spring merchandise, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker.

New Jersey legislators on Monday voted to send Gov. Chris Christie a bill to dissolve the bistate Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor and transfer its New Jersey operations to the state police.

After two weeks of working all-out to clear its worst congestion problem since 2002, the Port of Oakland on Friday reported reduced vessel backups and yard congestion, improved truck transaction times and better terminal productivity.

The Port of Virginia closed its port in Richmond after unexpected snowfall hit the James River facility Thursday afternoon.

Virginia’s Norfolk International Terminals remained closed Thursday to all export rail containers, as the port continues to cope with backlogged rail volume at the facility.

The gray chassis pool in Los Angeles-Long Beach has been operating for only four days, but the harbor trucking community likes it.

Cargomatic, the company driving the "Uberization" of local trucking in Southern California, wants to use its technology to break the massive container logjam at West Coast ports. The "Silicon Beach" tech company is offering a free-flow program designed to get ocean containers stacked up in port terminals on trucks and moving inland more quickly.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded a $134.5 million contract for deepening the Port of Savannah’s outer harbor channel 18.5 miles into the Atlantic Ocean.

The West Coast port crisis inflicted severe pain on North American agricultural exporters, but there’s little chance of them diverting cargo to other ports like some of their retail counterparts.

The Port of Virginia said Wednesday that a hold is still in place on all export intermodal rail traffic at its Norfolk International Terminals as the port continues to cope with significant rail volume at the facility.

Protracted West Coast port delays will push Dollar General to shift more import cargo to the East Coast, a logistics executive for the discount retailer said Wednesday at the 15th annual TPM conference.

The U.S. faces many challenging port issues but chief among them is a system of labor-management relations that fails to consider the interests of the ultimate customers, the chairman of Kuehne + Nagel told TPM 2015 in Long Beach on Monday.

The three major chassis providers in Southern California finalized an agreement Friday that should guarantee equipment availability and eliminate the costly shuttling of chassis among 11 of the 13 container terminals in the largest U.S. port complex.

The Port of Los Angeles is teaming up with terminal operators and a harbor drayage company to launch a container free-flow operation aimed at reducing congestion at the largest U.S. port while delivering import loads to retailers and other large shippers quickly and efficiently.

A new incentive program for ocean carriers at Philadelphia could bring more than 1 million new containers through the city’s Delaware River terminals over the next five years, according to the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority.

Terminal operators are committed to return West Coast ports to normal operations as quickly as possible, but their ability to eliminate the backlogs of containers and vessels that are choking their facilities will be capped by constraints on the availability of dockworkers, harbor truck drivers and chassis.

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach can begin working together to address congestion after U.S. Federal Maritime commissioners on Thursday unanimously approved an amendment this week allowing the two largest U.S. container ports to work together.

Container volume at the Port of Los Angeles declined 22.7 percent in January as the largest U.S. port was brought to its knees because of congestion, dockworker slowdowns and restrictions on night and weekend work imposed by employers.

More than 61 percent of the hours worked by International Longshoremen’s Association members employed by New York Shipping Association companies during the most recent ILA-NYSA contract year were paid at overtime rates.

Freight forwarder Expeditors International saw air freight volume soar in the fourth quarter, reaching a 19 percent year-over-year increase in December, as shippers tried to fly over West Coast port gridlock.

The Port of Virginia closed its Hampton Roads terminals Thursday after a winter storm dumped as many as nine inches of snow in some corners of the southeastern corner of the state.

The Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners appointed industry veterans Michael Christensen and Glenn Farren to newly-created management positions that were established to enhance cargo flow and improve service, as the second-largest U.S. container port recovers from months of congestion.

The port of Savannah will add 10 electric-powered rubber-tired gantry cranes this summer, increasing the number of RTGs in the port’s container yard operations to 146. The RTGs continue a pattern of heavy investment that is credited with helping the port sidestep congestion that has plagued other ports.

Trans-Pacific air freight markets will continue to benefit from shipper demand as U.S. ports take several months to clear the backlog of containers that stacked up during the protracted waterfront labor dispute between terminals and the union.

Los Angeles-Long Beach will always be a vital U.S. gateway, but the nine-month labor dispute that helped bring West Coast ports to the brink of being shutdown is making shippers and industry analysts take a hard look at the trans-Pacific supply chain.

The U.S. and Canada cleared a big hurdle to building a second span over the Detroit River, a critical crossing and sometime choke-point for cross-border trade.

The North Carolina State Ports Authority is extending gates hours by an hour at the Port of Wilmington to help keep pace with volume growth.