By Tyler Durden
By Greg Miller of FreightWaves,
By one measure, the number of container ships stuck waiting offshore of Los Angeles and Long Beach has plummeted. The logjam hit a peak of 86 container ships offshore on Nov. 16, according to data from the Marine Exchange of Southern California. A week later, it was a mere 61, the lowest since early October.
Problem solved?
Far from it.
The waiting container ships are still out there — more of them than ever. It’s just that more are over the horizon, where you can’t see them, thanks to the successful implementation of a new queuing system that began last week.
“The overall flow of container ships and big-picture backup has not changed,” acknowledged Marine Exchange of Southern California Executive Director Kip Louttit.
If you include all of the container ships physically at anchor on Tuesday off LA/LB, plus the ships in holding patterns within 40 miles of the ports, which were counted in the previous queuing system, plus all the ships waiting further afield that are now technically in the queue under the new system, then 93 container vessels were waiting for berths at Los Angeles/Long Beach on Tuesday, a new all-time high…
