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Not a single container ship waited offshore of the ports of Los Angeles or Long Beach on Nov. 22-23. It was the first time the queue had gone to zero since October 2020, in the early days of the COVID-era consumer boom.
“The container-ship backup for the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach has ended,” declared Kip Louttit, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, in a statement to the media. “It is time to move into a different phase of operations.”
The backup may be over in Southern California, but it’s not yet over for North America overall.
An American Shipper survey of MarineTraffic ship-position data and port queue lists showed 59 container ships waiting off North American ports on Nov. 23, mainly along the East and Gulf coasts.
That’s still well above pre-COVID levels, when numbers were in the single digits. But congestion is clearly easing: The count is down 60% from the peaks earlier this year.
The traffic jam of container ships off Southern California began garnering headlines in early 2021 and became emblematic of the supply chain crisis.
Southern California’s ship queue shot to new heights in the second half of 2021. The extremely high number of vessels anchored and loitering in close proximity to each other in San Pedro Bay and the surrounding waters raised both safety and environmental concerns.
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