— Trucking companies and freight rail operators are scrambling to move billions in trade that has been arriving at the 14 ports where the largest longshoremen’s union in North America is planning to strike after midnight Monday if a new contract is not reached with ports management.
— For the week ending last Friday, nearly $14 billion in trade arrived at these ports, including New York/New Jersey, Baltimore, Norfolk, Savannah, Miami, New Orleans and Houston, with $2.7 billion in trade arriving on Friday alone.
— The International Longshoremen’s Association signaled in a post over the weekend that it will strike at 12:01 a.m. ET on Tuesday, October 1. “Time isn’t on the side of importers,” a logistics CEO tells CNBC.
With a potential strike at ports up and down the East Coast and along the Gulf Coast set to begin after midnight Monday, logistics executives tell CNBC the remaining hours are critical in moving out as much trade as possible before a shutdown that will do serious damage to the functioning of the U.S. economy.
Based on data from ImportGenius, which tracks the Bills of Lading — the digital receipts of cargo containers — a total of 54,456 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) arrived on Friday at the 14 ports operating under the Master Contract between the International Longshoremen’s Association and the US Maritime Alliance (USMX) which expires at midnight Monday. The approximate value of that freight was upwards of $2.7 billion, based on an MDS Transmodal estimate of $50,000 per container. For the weekdays between September 23-27, a total of 273,417 TEUs were imputed through customs at these ports with a value of approximately $13.67 billion.
Alan Baer, CEO of OL USA, said the enormity of the freight volumes arriving Friday alone shows the scramble logistics companies are in to get the containers off the dock by close of business Monday. “Importers, in coordination with their logistic partners, should try to clear as many of their containers off open terminals where possible to avoid possible delays in acquiring their inventory,” said Baer.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Paul Bedard
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://www.offthepress.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.
