NRF Predicts Record Cargo Levels at Ports

July 10, 2006  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in on July 2006 The nation’s major container ports are expected to see record cargo levels this summer and fall, but should be able to handle the added workload without congestion problems that have strained the industry’s supply chains in the past.

That’s according to the July Port Tracker report released Monday by the National Retail Federation and economic research firm Global Insight.

“We’re beginning to see numbers this summer that are higher than the peak for the entire year of 2005,” said Global Insight Economist Paul Bingham. “Last year’s records look like they’ve already been broken, and we should be hitting new records all summer and right up through November. Despite the volume, the ports are operating without congestion from harbor to gate and out onto the rail system. There are challenges to sustaining system performance because of the growth in volume, but we expect shippers will get through the season without significant congestion.”

All ports covered by Port Tracker–Los Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland, Tacoma and Seattle on the West Coast, and New York/New Jersey, Hampton Roads, Charleston and Savannah on the East Coast–are currently rated “low” for congestion, the same as last month.

Nationwide, ports surveyed handled 1.34 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs)–which represents a 20-foot cargo container or its equivalent–of container traffic in May, the most recent month for which actual numbers are available. That was up 1.2 percent from April and 9 percent from May 2005.

Projected volume for June was expected to be 1.38 million TEUs, already above 2005’s peak of 1.37 million set last October, the traditional peak month of the shipping season. Over the six-month forecast period of the report, volume is expected to climb to a peak of 1.49 million TEUs this October–up 8.7 percent from October 2005–before settling to 1.39 million TEUs in November.Port Tracker, which is produced by the economic research, forecasting and analysis firm Global Insight for NRF, looks at inbound container volume, the availability of trucks and railroad cars to move cargo out of the ports, labor conditions and other factors that affect cargo movement and congestion.