LA and Long Beach Container Volumes Down

July numbers show a decline in container volume for the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. From what I have read there are a variety of potential causes for the downturn including, weakening imports, falling U.S. dollar, container ships bypassing the ports, increase in all-water service to the East Coast, and utilization of alternative West Coast ports.

Via Traffic World:

Total box volume in July fell 2.54 percent at the LA port to 698,159 TEUs - a standardized measure for variable-sized containers as twenty-foot-equivalent units.

Outbound loads of U.S. exports jumped 34 percent to 173,650 TEUs, but the number of empty boxes - which even a year ago outpaced export loads — plunged 23 percent to 157,012. The dominant category of loaded import containers shrank nearly 4 percent to 367,496.

Long Beach docks handled 563,703 TEUs last month, down 12.9 percent from July 2007,
as the volume of loaded inbound boxes dropped by 18 percent to 272,350 TEUs.

Like at neighboring Los Angeles, outbound loads now top the number of empties moving through Long Beach. Exports rose 13.5 percent to 153,364 TEUs and empties dropped 23 percent to 137,989.