Facing an unprecedented surge, where do ports and container lines go from here?
As the economy recovers from the pandemic, consumers are buying, businesses are reopening, and maritime operators are in a titanic struggle to process record-breaking cargo volumes. Next up: peak season.
Gary Frantz is a contributing editor for DC Velocity and its sister publication CSCMP's Supply Chain Quarterly, and a veteran communications executive with more than 30 years of experience in the transportation and logistics industries. He's served as communications director and strategic media relations counselor for companies including XPO Logistics, Con-way, Menlo Logistics, GT Nexus, Circle International Group, and Consolidated Freightways. Gary is currently principal of GNF Communications LLC, a consultancy providing freelance writing, editorial and media strategy services. He's a proud graduate of the Journalism program at California State University–Chico.
Maritime players, from containership lines to port operators, drayage truckers, third-party logistics companies, warehouse operators, and even inland U.S. intermodal rail services, found the first half of 2021 to be a titanic struggle as an overwhelming and sustained surge of ocean cargo threw transportation networks and supply chains into disarray.
Ports became jammed as they processed record container volumes. At one point earlier this year, the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles had in excess of 35 ships at anchor in San Pedro Bay, waiting for a berth. Turn times for drayage operators to move containers out of ports, once typically 24–48 hours, stretched out to seven days or more. Warehouses, already chock full of goods, began holding onto loaded containers on their chassis far beyond the contracted “free time,” parking them on-site or nearby until warehouse space became available—and exacerbating an already acute shortage of empty containers and chassis available for return.
Then, the giant Ever Given containership decided to go sideways in the Suez Canal, blocking hundreds of ships and delaying tens of thousands of containers loaded with all manner of goods. That created a backlog that took weeks to clear and caused a ripple effect from Shanghai to Rotterdam.
And Murphy’s Law wasn’t done yet.
In late May and June, the Port of Yantian—China’s largest and the gateway to the Pearl River Delta manufacturing center—suffered a renewed surge of Covid-19 cases. That closed the facility’s west port operations and caused the east port to scale back to 30% of capacity. And while the port resumed full operations near the end of June, the ensuing pileup of ships and containers disrupted supply chains from China to the U.S. to Europe.
“It’s been a buildup of one problem on top of another, and then the wheels truly came off the carriage,” observes Lars Jensen, CEO of the research and consulting firm Vespucci Maritime (formerly SeaIntelligence Consulting). He describes a convergence of unprecedented operational and economic developments creating bottlenecks around the globe—which he projects will take months to clean up. “It’s a game of musical chairs. There is not enough capacity in the world to move all the cargo people want to move. That’s why rates have skyrocketed. There is no short-term respite in sight.”
John Janson is senior director of global logistics for SanMar Corp., an Issaquah, Washington-based supplier of wholesale apparel, bags, and caps. A top 100 U.S importer, SanMar books thousands of import container shipments annually and operates some eight major distribution centers in the U.S.
“We have never worked so hard to get the bookings we have or paid so much for those bookings—ever,” says Janson, a three-decade logistics veteran. “And while you would expect to get capacity when you’re paying the kind of rates out there today, that’s just not the case,” he observes, adding that despite offering more money and longer contracts, his ocean carriers still are not living up to their “MQCs” or minimum quantity commitments.
All that has caused him to look for alternatives—and get creative. Most of his Asia-origin ocean cargo comes into the Pacific Northwest. Working with freight forwarder Ceva Logistics, he found a bulk cargo vessel calling on Longview, Washington, that had extra space available. Through the forwarder, he was able to book 20 containers on that ship. “In this case, Ceva and [ship operator] CMA CGM put together a very creative solution,” he notes.
Whether it’s booking space with container lines, helping suppliers obtain empty containers at origin, persistent port congestion, finding truckers and securing drayage resources, and even getting slots on eastbound intermodal trains out of the Pacific Northwest, “never in my career have I seen all facets of transportation under this kind of pressure at one time,” Janson says. “We have always tried to be a shipper of choice and a good steward of the carrier’s assets,” he adds. “That [helps make] us a desirable customer. We continue to play that card as much as we can.”
It’s not just the wholesalers; the nation’s retailers are feeling the heat as well—and raising the alarm. In a June 14 letter to President Joseph R. Biden, National Retail Federation (NRF) President and CEO Matthew W. Shay wrote: “The supply chain disruption issues, especially the congestion affecting our key maritime ports, are causing significant challenges for America’s retailers. The … issues have not only added days and weeks to our supply chain but have led to inventory shortages.”
In his letter, Shay also warned of the economic consequences of the disruptions, noting that all of the respondents to a recent NRF member survey had experienced cost increases, with a majority (75%) saying they would pass along some of the costs to consumers.
PULLING OUT ALL THE STOPS
Meanwhile, the nation’s ports are pulling out all the stops to get record volumes of freight off ships, onto trucks and trains, and out to shippers.
“In the month of May, we processed more than 1 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units)—an all-time record for any port in the Western Hemisphere,” says Gene Seroka, executive director for the Port of Los Angeles. The port in June was welcoming 15 container vessels a day, up from a pre-pandemic average of 10. He cites vessel productivity up 50% from pre-Covid levels—well above any previous measure. “Throughput is the highest it’s ever been,” he notes.
Congestion remains an issue, with dwell times in some cases increasing two- and threefold. He implores the Southern California import community to pick up their containers in timely fashion—and promptly return the empties and their chassis. “If there is no room on the ground because [shippers] cannot move containers out [to warehouses], that’s how ships sit. It’s all intertwined,” Seroka says.
NEW YORK STATE OF MIND
In Beth Rooney’s 29 years in the maritime business, she’s seen just about everything. Until this year. “We are 17% YTD over 2019, and that was a record year,” notes the deputy director of the port department for The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. “If you annualize what we have done over the last four months [February–May of 2021], that’s what we projected [to be handling] for 2026–27—five years down the line.”
Nevertheless, the port and its partners have stepped up, Rooney says. “We have not had any backup of ships at anchor waiting to get into the port. Average time at anchorage has been less than a day.”
On the land side, the issues have primarily been with empty containers—and getting them back. Ideally, the port wants truckers to do a “drop and pick,” which is dropping off an empty or export container and picking up a loaded container before leaving—a “double move” at the same terminal. Or a live load, where they come in with an empty chassis, get a container loaded, and depart.
But that doesn’t always happen. Too often, the trucker drops a load at one terminal but doesn’t have another to pick up. With the advent of ship alliances, the ship line might want the trucker to pick up a container at Terminal A and drop off the empty at Terminal C. Or, the trucker has no on-port pickup and has to return to the warehouse with an empty chassis and get another empty or export box.
“So trucker productivity is down. Then there are times when the ocean carrier says, ‘I really don’t have anyplace for you to bring that empty, keep it for a day,’” Rooney explains. “Now, the trucker has no place to bring it, does not have a set of wheels to get another container because the empty it was going to return still has the wheels on it.” All of that increases dwell time and hampers both port throughput and the number of efficient moves a trucker can do in a day. And it presents a huge area for improvement.
Two other issues she cites are vessel schedule reliability and longer dwell times for intermodal cars in Chicago. “That’s limited how many Chicago boxes we can send in a day,” whereas “off-schedule ships lead to vessel bunching and delays everywhere in the supply chain.”
“We’ve had our challenges and we own those challenges,” she says, noting that through all the pressure and turmoil of the past year, she’s extremely proud of how the NY-NJ port community has come together and risen to the challenges.
UNPRECEDENTED VOLUMES
It’s a similar story over at the Port of Long Beach. Executive Director Mario Cordero notes that the port’s recent infrastructure improvements have paid dividends and made the port “big ship ready,” able to accommodate and efficiently process the largest 19,000-plus TEU vessels. However, the surging volume through 2021 “is beyond anything we may have forecasted. Never in our lifetime have we experienced the disruption we’ve seen in the past couple of years,” he notes.
Like Rooney, Cordero says that one of the biggest impediments to improving cargo flow—that is, getting containers off ships and out of the port efficiently—is a lack of equipment, specifically railcars, due to congestion and delay issues major rail providers are experiencing in Chicago. “Rail movement at the Port of Long Beach is a priority, and any time they [rail operators] don’t have railcars available to move containers inland, that becomes problematic.”
The congestion issues in Chicago have become so acute, that in mid-July, the Union Pacific Railroad temporarily suspended all of its intermodal train service from the four West Coast ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, and Tacoma into Chicago in an effort to relieve the backlog of boxes at Chicago-area terminals. The Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway took similar action, essentially “rationing” space temporarily on eastbound intermodal trains from Los Angeles and Long Beach into Chicago, citing the surge of incoming boxes at destination, and challenges from congestion and processing delays.
The good news, Cordero says, is that the port’s metrics overall are improving, in dwell and truck times, and in ships at anchor. In late June, the port “had 13 vessels at anchor, much improved from months back when we had 30, 40 ships at anchor.”
MEANWHILE, BACK AT SEA …
As for the vessels themselves, maritime operators are still struggling to deal with the “surge of 2021,” notes Tom Donahue, executive vice president and CEO of U.S. operations for freight forwarder Aeronet Worldwide. The problem lies not so much with the fleets themselves as with port operations, he explains. After widespread sailing cancellations last year when cargo volumes fell off the deep end, all ships are now back in play, he says. But bunching at ports and congestion within them is severely delaying containers from reaching consignees, sometimes for days or weeks, he notes.
“[Vessel] service is terrible; transit time is a mess,” Donahue says. “Vessels used to be unloaded in 24–48 hours. Now, the average nationwide is three to five days to get a ship unloaded and out of the port.”
As peak season kicks into full gear, shippers have to lock up capacity now or risk their goods sitting on the dock, notes Donahue. His advice for shippers: Make sure your forecasts are accurate. Get them to your logistics provider as early as possible. If you want your goods to arrive in October, go back six weeks and get your bookings in place then. “And expect to pay more than you ever have before. A container from Asia was $1,500 a year ago. Now, China to the West Coast, all in, is hitting $10,000 or more.”
Penske said today that its facility in Channahon, Illinois, is now fully operational, and is predominantly powered by an onsite photovoltaic (PV) solar system, expected to generate roughly 80% of the building's energy needs at 200 KW capacity. Next, a Grand Rapids, Michigan, location will be also active in the coming months, and Penske's Linden, New Jersey, location is expected to go online in 2025.
And over the coming year, the Pennsylvania-based company will add seven more sites under its power purchase agreement with Sunrock Distributed Generation, retrofitting them with new PV solar systems which are expected to yield a total of roughly 600 KW of renewable energy. Those additional sites are all in California: Fresno, Hayward, La Mirada, National City, Riverside, San Diego, and San Leandro.
On average, four solar panel-powered Penske Truck Leasing facilities will generate an estimated 1-million-kilowatt hours (kWh) of renewable energy annually and will result in an emissions avoidance of 442 metric tons (MT) CO2e, which is equal to powering nearly 90 homes for one year.
"The initiative to install solar systems at our locations is a part of our company's LEED-certified facilities process," Ivet Taneva, Penske’s vice president of environmental affairs, said in a release. "Investing in solar has considerable economic impacts for our operations as well as the environmental benefits of further reducing emissions related to electricity use."
Overall, Penske Truck Leasing operates and maintains more than 437,000 vehicles and serves its customers from nearly 1,000 maintenance facilities and more than 2,500 truck rental locations across North America.
That challenge is one of the reasons that fewer shoppers overall are satisfied with their shopping experiences lately, Lincolnshire, Illinois-based Zebra said in its “17th Annual Global Shopper Study.”th Annual Global Shopper Study.” While 85% of shoppers last year were satisfied with both the in-store and online experiences, only 81% in 2024 are satisfied with the in-store experience and just 79% with online shopping.
In response, most retailers (78%) say they are investing in technology tools that can help both frontline workers and those watching operations from behind the scenes to minimize theft and loss, Zebra said.
Just 38% of retailers currently use AI-based prescriptive analytics for loss prevention, but a much larger 50% say they plan to use it in the next 1-3 years. That was followed by self-checkout cameras and sensors (45%), computer vision (46%), and RFID tags and readers (42%) that are planned for use within the next three years, specifically for loss prevention.
Those strategies could help improve the brick and mortar shopping experience, since 78% of shoppers say it’s annoying when products are locked up or secured within cases. Adding to that frustration is that it’s hard to find an associate while shopping in stores these days, according to 70% of consumers. In response, some just walk out; one in five shoppers has left a store without getting what they needed because a retail associate wasn’t available to help, an increase over the past two years.
The survey also identified additional frustrations faced by retailers and associates:
challenges with offering easy options for click-and-collect or returns, despite high shopper demand for them
the struggle to confirm current inventory and pricing
lingering labor shortages and increasing loss incidents, even as shoppers return to stores
“Many retailers are laying the groundwork to build a modern store experience,” Matt Guiste, Global Retail Technology Strategist, Zebra Technologies, said in a release. “They are investing in mobile and intelligent automation technologies to help inform operational decisions and enable associates to do the things that keep shoppers happy.”
The survey was administered online by Azure Knowledge Corporation and included 4,200 adult shoppers (age 18+), decision-makers, and associates, who replied to questions about the topics of shopper experience, device and technology usage, and delivery and fulfillment in store and online.
Supply chains are poised for accelerated adoption of mobile robots and drones as those technologies mature and companies focus on implementing artificial intelligence (AI) and automation across their logistics operations.
That’s according to data from Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Mobile Robots and Drones, released this week. The report shows that several mobile robotics technologies will mature over the next two to five years, and also identifies breakthrough and rising technologies set to have an impact further out.
Gartner’s Hype Cycle is a graphical depiction of a common pattern that arises with each new technology or innovation through five phases of maturity and adoption. Chief supply chain officers can use the research to find robotic solutions that meet their needs, according to Gartner.
Gartner, Inc.
The mobile robotic technologies set to mature over the next two to five years are: collaborative in-aisle picking robots, light-cargo delivery robots, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for transport, mobile robotic goods-to-person systems, and robotic cube storage systems.
“As organizations look to further improve logistic operations, support automation and augment humans in various jobs, supply chain leaders have turned to mobile robots to support their strategy,” Dwight Klappich, VP analyst and Gartner fellow with the Gartner Supply Chain practice, said in a statement announcing the findings. “Mobile robots are continuing to evolve, becoming more powerful and practical, thus paving the way for continued technology innovation.”
Technologies that are on the rise include autonomous data collection and inspection technologies, which are expected to deliver benefits over the next five to 10 years. These include solutions like indoor-flying drones, which utilize AI-enabled vision or RFID to help with time-consuming inventory management, inspection, and surveillance tasks. The technology can also alleviate safety concerns that arise in warehouses, such as workers counting inventory in hard-to-reach places.
“Automating labor-intensive tasks can provide notable benefits,” Klappich said. “With AI capabilities increasingly embedded in mobile robots and drones, the potential to function unaided and adapt to environments will make it possible to support a growing number of use cases.”
Humanoid robots—which resemble the human body in shape—are among the technologies in the breakthrough stage, meaning that they are expected to have a transformational effect on supply chains, but their mainstream adoption could take 10 years or more.
“For supply chains with high-volume and predictable processes, humanoid robots have the potential to enhance or supplement the supply chain workforce,” Klappich also said. “However, while the pace of innovation is encouraging, the industry is years away from general-purpose humanoid robots being used in more complex retail and industrial environments.”
An eight-year veteran of the Georgia company, Hakala will begin his new role on January 1, when the current CEO, Tero Peltomäki, will retire after a long and noteworthy career, continuing as a member of the board of directors, Cimcorp said.
According to Hakala, automation is an inevitable course in Cimcorp’s core sectors, and the company’s end-to-end capabilities will be crucial for clients’ success. In the past, both the tire and grocery retail industries have automated individual machines and parts of their operations. In recent years, automation has spread throughout the facilities, as companies want to be able to see their entire operation with one look, utilize analytics, optimize processes, and lead with data.
“Cimcorp has always grown by starting small in the new business segments. We’ve created one solution first, and as we’ve gained more knowledge of our clients’ challenges, we have been able to expand,” Hakala said in a release. “In every phase, we aim to bring our experience to the table and even challenge the client’s initial perspective. We are interested in what our client does and how it could be done better and more efficiently.”
Although many shoppers will
return to physical stores this holiday season, online shopping remains a driving force behind peak-season shipping challenges, especially when it comes to the last mile. Consumers still want fast, free shipping if they can get it—without any delays or disruptions to their holiday deliveries.
One disruptor that gets a lot of headlines this time of year is package theft—committed by so-called “porch pirates.” These are thieves who snatch parcels from front stairs, side porches, and driveways in neighborhoods across the country. The problem adds up to billions of dollars in stolen merchandise each year—not to mention headaches for shippers, parcel delivery companies, and, of course, consumers.
Given the scope of the problem, it’s no wonder online shoppers are worried about it—especially during holiday season. In its annual report on package theft trends, released in October, the
security-focused research and product review firm Security.org found that:
17% of Americans had a package stolen in the past three months, with the typical stolen parcel worth about $50. Some 44% said they’d had a package taken at some point in their life.
Package thieves poached more than $8 billion in merchandise over the past year.
18% of adults said they’d had a package stolen that contained a gift for someone else.
Ahead of the holiday season, 88% of adults said they were worried about theft of online purchases, with more than a quarter saying they were “extremely” or “very” concerned.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are some low-tech steps consumers can take to help guard against porch piracy along with some high-tech logistics-focused innovations in the pipeline that can protect deliveries in the last mile. First, some common-sense advice on avoiding package theft from the Security.org research:
Install a doorbell camera, which is a relatively low-cost deterrent.
Bring packages inside promptly or arrange to have them delivered to a secure location if no one will be at home.
Consider using click-and-collect options when possible.
If the retailer allows you to specify delivery-time windows, consider doing so to avoid having packages sit outside for extended periods.
These steps may sound basic, but they are by no means a given: Fewer than half of Americans consider the timing of deliveries, less than a third have a doorbell camera, and nearly one-fifth take no precautions to prevent package theft, according to the research.
Tech vendors are stepping up to help. One example is
Arrive AI, which develops smart mailboxes for last-mile delivery and pickup. The company says its Mailbox-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform will revolutionize the last mile by building a network of parcel-storage boxes that can be accessed by people, drones, or robots. In a nutshell: Packages are placed into a weatherproof box via drone, robot, driverless carrier, or traditional delivery method—and no one other than the rightful owner can access it.
Although the platform is still in development, the company already offers solutions for business clients looking to secure high-value deliveries and sensitive shipments. The health-care industry is one example: Arrive AI offers secure drone delivery of medical supplies, prescriptions, lab samples, and the like to hospitals and other health-care facilities. The platform provides real-time tracking, chain-of-custody controls, and theft-prevention features. Arrive is conducting short-term deployments between logistics companies and health-care partners now, according to a company spokesperson.
The MaaS solution has a pretty high cool factor. And the common-sense best practices just seem like solid advice. Maybe combining both is the key to a more secure last mile—during peak shipping season and throughout the year as well.