Record number of cargo ships stranded outside California

Just off the southern California coast lies a traffic jam colossal proportions. Dozens of ships wait up to weeks to unload their cargo in Los Angeles and Long Beach as ports are inundated with containers of cargo to be taken to their final destination.

Tthe last h shipping headachelike more than 60 seated ships idling off the coast of Southern California, reports the Wall Street Journal. Waiting times for unloading stretch up to three weeks.

Companies try to ramp up for the upcoming holiday season encounter an annoying shipping bottleneck. Don’t expect Christmas to be cheap this year, reports CNN, because decoration prices soar due to shipping costs. Remember store limits to toilet paper? It’s back toobecause Costco can’t have enough paper towels and toilet paper in stock.

Part of the problem is that while Southern California ports are responsible for more than a quarter of U.S. imports, they don’t operate 24/7. It’s normal for ports around the world to operate 24 hours a day, but Long Beach and Los Angeles close for hours throughout the work week and close entirely on Sundays.

And it seems no one can agree on who is responsible for the long delays, from the Wall Street Journal:

Participants from every link in the American chain – shipping companies, port workers, truckers, warehouse operators, railroads and retailers – blame others for the imbalances and disagree that 24/7 operations. 24/7 will help them catch up. All of them are struggling with a labor shortage.

Long beach plans on operating 24 hours a day Monday through Thursday while Los Angeles will expand its weekend door hours. But even then, there may not be enough trucks available to pick up goods:

Truck drivers often do not show up for scheduled appointments to pick up boxes from flooded container yards to make room for the next load, according to shipping and port officials. Truckers blame terminal congestion, saying delays to one appointment can cause them to miss the next one, and shipping companies are not doing enough to empty towers of empty containers taking up space at the docks.

There is also a storage problem. According to the Wall Street Journal report, about 98% of warehouses in Southern California are full to the brim. Los Angeles’ largest port executive director Gene Seroka says there is at least 25 percent less storage space than needed. Some shippers use containers at the port as storage units, which adds to the congestion.

Southern California is not alone. The overloaded supply chain has also caused the build-up of around two dozen ships off the coasts of New York and New Jersey, reports Inside the business community.

Port authorities believe bottlenecks can be eliminated if every part of the supply chain operates 24/7 and hope that updated opening hours will help reduce congestion.