There’s no let up in the port congestion plaguing North American gateway ports.

Changed buying patterns brought about by the pandemic have brought extreme consumer demand into North America. This combined with Covid outbreaks at local dockworking forces and a shortage of container equipment have created what many liner executives have described as the perfect storm in recent weeks.

Splash has surveyed the 10 largest container ports in North America today using vessel tracking site MarineTraffic and picked out the four ports with the biggest vessel backlogs.

More than 30 ships are anchored in San Pedro Bay (see map below left), waiting to berth at Los Angeles and Long Beach, the queue stretching 20 km down the coastline.

Further north in California, 12 ships are waiting in Oakland (see map above right), while north of the border there are 15 ships waiting for berths to open up in Vancouver (see map below left), Canada’s largest port.

On the east coast congestion is overall far less but there are still pockets of heavy traffic, notably at the port of Savannah (see map above right) where 13 vessels are anchored this morning waiting for a slice of quayside to become available.

There is little sign that the congestion easing, with Gene Seroka, the head of the port of Los Angeles, saying recently that it would take a month just to clear all the ships at anchor at his port, let alone all those still inbound from Asia.

Culled from Splash 247.com