SIMIC

"More than 400,000 TEU are just sitting there [off Southern California]," Lars Jensen, CEO of Vespucci Maritime, told the recent Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) Expo in Long Beach. "The way to solve this is to resolve the bottlenecks, and the solution is landside."

Unprecedented import volumes for 14 consecutive months are causing the vessel bunching, while bottlenecks at warehouses and inland rail hubs are also contributing to port congestion, reports IHS Media.

Mr Jensen said North America will not begin to experience relief from this "fantastic peak" until late in the first quarter of 2022 as production in Asia slows down when factories shut for the annual Lunar New Year celebrations.

"It will be at least six months before there is a glimmer of hope that things will be back to normal," he said.

Chassis shortages are contributing to landside congestion not only in Southern California, but also in the Southeastern ports of Savannah and Charleston and at inland rail hubs such as Chicago, Memphis, and Kansas City.

In the Southeast, the "street dwell" of chassis with containers sitting on them has more than doubled from 6 days recently to about 15 days, Mike Wilson, CEO of Consolidated Chassis Management, said.

Congested warehouses in the Southeast, as well as truck capacity and chassis shortages in the region, are making it difficult to move imported containers from the ports to the warehouses, and from warehouses to retail stores, Mr Wilson said.

"It's about the surge of cargo and slow turn times and the depleted chassis supply," he said.

Containers that move by rail to the inland hubs are also backing up because of congested ramps.