Port of Los Angeles, busiest container port

 

Like a rainbow after the storm, after complicated months the queue of ships to unload merchandise in the port of Los Angeles reports an 80% decrease compared to the previous year, which is a sign that the interruptions in the supply chain are being slowly solved. 

The Port of Los Angeles is one of the most important ports in America, as it is the country's main gateway for international trade and the busiest seaport in the Western Hemisphere.

In June 2022, this important port moved 876,611 twenty-foot-capacity containers, registering its best record in more than 100 years. As long as cargo keeps moving, the logistics industry can take a breather and work to maintain the efficiencies that make it possible for goods to successfully transit from ship to shore by rail, and then by truck to their destinations.

Every achievement must be surpassed by a greater one, therefore, for the Los Angeles port authorities, the reduction in the accumulation of ships serves as motivation to reduce the number even more, until obtaining zero stranded vessels. 

To achieve this, importers must also be able to carry out cargo collection much more quickly than they do today, equal to or better than before the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, when time waiting to disembark was practically nil.

Although the reduction in ships lined up in the port of Los Angeles is undoubtedly encouraging, the shortage of truck drivers, needed to move goods overland and put them on supermarket shelves, still needs to be resolved to combat the shortage of products. 

However, the trucking union continues to protest state bill AB5, a sharing economy law passed in 2019 that makes it harder for companies to classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees.

Another interesting phenomenon that is developing as the bottlenecks in the port of Los Angeles decrease is the precipitous drop in container prices, because unlike the most difficult moments of the COVID-19 health contingency, there is now an oversupply of containers, the consequence of which is the fall in prices.

As markets reopen and demand softens, excess supply is a natural result of the forces of supply and demand balancing at new levels. 

Although having an offer of more containers provides significant relief to those who pay for the service, it is estimated that freight prices will not fall in the same way as container prices, because although they are considerably less than before, interruptions in the supply chain continue to arise, and other factors such as economic changes, inflation and international relations could affect its stability.

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