August Port Activity Way Up

August 9, 2006  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in Furniture Retailing on August 2006 August traffic at the nation’s major retail container ports is on track to possibly tie October as the busiest month of the year, according to the August Port Tracker report released Tuesday by the National Retail Federation and Global Insight.

The report indicates, however, that the ports and the transportation systems they feed are operating efficiently enough to prevent major hold-ups.

“The ports are already in peak season,” Global Insight Economist Paul Bingham said. “Nationally, August volumes are expected to be as high as the peak projected for October, and we’re going to see the record numbers continue into fall. The increase in volume is going to challenge everyone’s ability to perform, but the ports themselves and the truck and rail systems are all operating OK so far. We expect shippers will make it through peak season without significant congestion.”

Port Tracker covers the ports of 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. All those locations are currently rated “low” for congestion, the same as last month.

Nationwide, the ports surveyed handled 1.36 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of container traffic in June, the most recent month for which actual numbers are available. The figure was up 3.5 percent from May and 8.6 percent from June 2005.

June’s number was just under 2005’s year-long peak of 1.37 million TEU set last October, and numbers well above the 2005 peak are expected to be hit through the remainder of this summer and fall: July is forecast at 1.42 million (up 10.3 percent from July 2005), August at 1.46 million (up 9.9 percent from August 2005), September at 1.42 million (up 5.7 percent from September 2005) and October at 1.46 million (up 6.5 percent from October 2005). As in past years, numbers are expected to fall off after October, dropping to 1.35 million in November (up 7.1 percent from November 2005) and 1.3 million in December (up 8.6 percent from December 2005). One TEU is a 20-foot cargo container or its equivalent.

Port Tracker, which is produced by the economic research, forecasting and analysis firm Global Insight for the 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.