Rail Cargo Delays Out of LA, Long Beach Ports Reach 2-Year High
The flurry of cargo into the U.S. West Coast ahead of the East and Gulf Coast port strike has resulted in railroad delays out of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
In September, the Port of Los Angeles handled 954,706 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs), marking a 27.6 percent increase from the previous year, with imports similarly surging 26.8 percent to 497,803 TEUs. The Port of Long Beach saw flat growth in container handling, processing 829,499 TEUs in September, while imports inched up 2 percent to 416,999 TEUs. The monthly totals capped off the busiest third quarter by volume on record at both ports.
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Container dwell times at the ports reached their highest levels in 2024 this September, reflecting ongoing pressures from the pulling forward of goods ahead of the three-day strike.
Rail-destined cargo dwell time has seen a massive acceleration in recent months, rising to 9.25 days at the ports’ rail yards—a two-year high, according to the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association (PMSA). This nearly doubles 4.73-day rail dwell times from June and surpasses the September 2023 peak season high of 6.54 days.
“Right now we’ve got about 20,000 rail containers of all varieties sitting at our docks awaiting loading—and they’re moving out,” said Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, during a Friday briefing. He said there were roughly 8,100 containers waiting nine days or more, but said that number is dwindling.
While 67.3 percent of cargo entering the twin ports went beyond a five-day rail dwell in September, just 30.8 percent experienced those waits in June, according to the PMSA.
The congestion at the rail brings “no dramatic impact to port operations,” Seroka said.
Union Pacific, one of the railways that handles and moves cargo out of the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports, saw September year-over-year volumes increase north of 40 percent, according to a Sept. 30 letter from CEO Jim Vena to Surface Transportation Board chair Robert Primus. Vena said it increased car supply to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach by 27 percent since the start of the month.
BNSF, the other major railway serving the ports, pulled all its international stack cars out of long-term storage and have since staged “surge” locomotives at key points on the Southern Transcon, which is the main line between Los Angeles and Chicago. The railroad is also departing full length westbound trains from Chicago even without a full load of containers to get necessary rail capacity back to the ports.
The delays come as the L.A. port is seeking more expansion to handle larger swaths of cargo on its rail yards. The hub unveiled in September that it had plans to build a $52 million on-dock rail expansion, which will add five loading and unloading tracks in the intermodal yard at the port’s Pier 300 terminal. Construction is expected to begin next year, with the project designed to increase on-dock rail yard capacity and enable more cargo to be loaded directly onto trains via the yard.
Dwell times for trucking reached their highest level in 2024, but haven’t seen the aggressive jumps that rail has had. Cargo moving out of the San Pedro Bay Port Complex via truck spent an average of 3.21 days at port terminals in September, up from 2.7 days in June and on par with the October 2023 peak season high. Truck-destined dwell times are slightly up from the 3.0-day rail dwell during September 2023.
With most holiday cargo already in the U.S. and the East and Gulf Coast port strike temporarily put on ice, the rail dwell numbers are expected to normalize in the coming months, especially since October imports are traditionally supposed to drop off a bit from September anyway.
“We feel very good about where retailers are in terms of their inventory cycle, getting goods into place, and being prepared to meet the demand for the holiday season,” said Matthew Shay, National Retail Federation (NRF) president and CEO, during the briefing.
Shay said retailers are seeing inventory levels level out to more historic ratios of 1.1 months of inventory, normalizing from the swinging highs and lows that occurred throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and its fallout.
Based on the amount of goods imported into the U.S. and current consumer spending habits, the NRF is expecting modest holiday retail sales growth of 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent, which would generate total revenue between $979.5 billion and $989 billion.
“Most holiday merchandise is already here,” said Shay, who noted August’s 2.34 million TEUs of imports calculated by NRF’s Global Port Tracker came in nearly 20 percent higher than the year prior ahead of possible strike action. “We saw people really adjusting their behavior in anticipation of what might happen.”
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