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Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
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March 2021 #13260 Page #104
‘Tsunami of Freight’ Points to Supply-Chain Holdups Lingering Past Spring Craig Webb President, Webb Analytics
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raffic jams at America’s ports, railroad terminals, and trucking centers all indicate that the supply headaches you suffered last year are likely to continue until deep into spring. Products from China that you sell are most at risk, but goods produced in North America also are having issues that won’t go away soon. Sky-high lumber prices and continued adjustments due to Covid just aggravate the pain. “I’ve never made as much money as I did last year,” one dealer told me recently. “And I’ve never enjoyed it less.” Only 22% of container ships arrived at West Coast ports on schedule in December, down from 71% the same month in 2019. The average delay in days overdue more than doubled to 8. For much of this year, there have been more container ships at anchor in the Los Angeles-Long Beach harbor than there are ships that had docked and were being worked. Those vessels almost certainly contain lights, fasteners, flooring, electrical equipment, tools, and consumer goods sold at construction supply companies nationwide. Normally, the Lunar New Year would lead to a slowdown in traffic because Chinese factories would close for a week-long holiday. But this year they’re staying open, contributing to a “tsunami of freight,” as one publication put it, in which all transport modes are struggling to handle huge volumes of goods. Just about all of the 1.8 billion square feet of industrial and distribution space in Southern California is being used. “Supply chains are full and backed up, and every new unit of inventory is more expensive than the last,” FreightWaves economist Anthony Smith said in a Feb. 9 webcast. Terminal operators at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles predict it will take between April and June for the backlogs of vessels to dissipate. They’d better, because shipping volumes typically peak in August and September, when holiday goods start to arrive on U.S. shores.
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