America’s biggest ports face a new kind of paralysis
Rather than too much cargo as last year, ships are now bringing in too little
It was called the tweetstorm that saved Christmas. In October 2021 scores of freighters idled at anchor off the west coast of America unable to deliver imports to docks already choc-a-bloc with containers. To find out what was wrong Ryan Petersen, founder of Flexport, a logistics firm, took a boat tour of America’s biggest port complex. He concluded that the adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach were at a standstill largely because of a shortage of space, which meant empty containers could not be removed from the dock. “OVERWHELM THE BOTTLENECK!” he tweeted. The thread went viral. Politicians were stung into action. Long Beach relaxed restrictions on how high containers could be stacked. Goods moved again. Santa Claus heaved a sigh of relief.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Terminal velocity”
Business December 17th 2022
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