U.S. Ports - Cargo volume expected to drop
October 10, 2008 by Splatty
Filed under Seafreight
At least that is the word from the National Retail Federation. The NRF’s latest press release states that container volume for 2008 is expected to decrease 6.5 percent compared to 2007. Reasons for the decline are various, but the most obvious factor is the state of the U.S. economy.
Volume is projected to total 15.43 million Twenty-Foot-Equivalent Units for the year, compared with 16.5 million TEU in 2007. The estimate is down from 15.5 million projected in September, which would have been a 6 percent decline from 2007. The total would be the lowest since 2005, when 15.4 million TEU moved through the ports. One TEU is one 20-foot container or its equivalent.
From an NOVCC perspective, at least in my current market environment, I haven’t seen a major downward trending in container business…yet. Although containerized imports are down slightly, exports have increased dramatically due to the falling dollar. A few of my retail customers have indicated that they are anticipating a slow down in sales over the final months of the year which has impacted the amount of goods they have brought in during peak season. Most have indicated that they don’t want to be strapped with excess inventory that they cannot sell.
Lower container volumes = less work for ILWU | Third Party Logistics News - 3PLwire on Fri, 10th Oct 2008 4:06 pm
[...] My colleague mentioned the NRF (National Retail Federation) report on lower yearly container volume in 2008 vs. 2007 (6.5%, to be exact). I just read an article over at American Shipper outlining the woes of ILWU labor, where “casuals”, the part time labor who pick up the extra work that full-time ILWU members can’t handle, are having a difficult time finding work as a result of lower cargo volumes: The ILWU has two generic types of workers: casual members and registered members. Casuals are part-time workers who must accumulate a set number of work hours within a certain period to qualify for a full-time registered position. Registered positions include longshoremen, clerks and foremen. Because the casuals only get extra work that cannot be filled first by full-time ILWU members, the current downturn at the ports has hit the casuals significantly harder. The nearly 9,500 ILWU casuals in Southern California have experienced the worst West Coast reduction, with a nearly 60 percent drop off in available work hours from 1.64 million hours for the first 41 weeks of last year to 687,000 hours this year. These are work levels not seen by casuals at the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports since 1999. Work available for the nearly 300 Oakland casuals has dropped by nearly 47 percent, from 28,236 hours last year to 15,186 hours this year. The last time casuals in Oakland saw this level of available work was in 2002. [...]