24-Hour Schedule Helps Port Backlog But Isn’t the Only Issue

In addition to imposing fines on ships sitting too long in ports, earlier in October, the White House announced the Port of Los Angeles would shift to a 24-hours-a-day schedule to help work through the backlog. The Port of Long Beach had already extended its working hours.

“The terminals are running out of space, and this will make room for the containers sitting on those ships at anchor,” said Mario Cordero, Port of Long Beach executive director.

In an interview with CNN, Gene Seroka, head of the Port of Los Angeles, said that Biden’s plan was helping it to move through some of the cargo that had been sitting on the dock for several days.

“We had 25 percent of all cargo on our dock sitting here for 13 days or longer (and) that’s been cut in just about half (in a week),” he told CNN.

But experts have been skeptical about the impact, because the warehousing and trucking sectors are not following the same schedule.

“You can keep the ports open but if there are no trucks coming to pick-up or no warehouses open at 3 a.m., it’s kind of a moot point,” Brian Bourke, chief growth officer at logistics firm Seko, told Bloomberg.

Everything is connected, that’s why it is called a supply chain, he says. All entities need to be in sync to solve the problem.

The Ports of Los Angeles processed 954,377 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in August, bringing the first eight-month total to more than 7.2M TEUs, an increase of 30 percent compared to 2020.