The Fastest Pacific Crossing Can Still Leave Cargo Waiting Inland
A faster ocean service buys an importer time only if the next part of the journey can use it. When a container reaches a gateway before a train slot, a driver or a warehouse receiving appointment is available, the saving becomes additional waiting time on land. That creates a difficult purchasing problem: the team booking the vessel can secure a faster crossing while leaving the business with no earlier access to its inventory. The useful measure is therefore the date goods become available for sale or production, with the ocean booking assessed against that requirement.
This distinction becomes more important when shippers respond to disruption in similar ways. Concentrating cargo through a preferred gateway can place additional pressure on the same rail connections and inland facilities that make that gateway attractive. Switching domestic freight to rail can add another stream of demand to those networks. Comments provided to The Supply Chainer by Jim Jelinek, President of Roadtex Warehousing at Roadtex, an Echo Global Logistics company, describe how those decisions are interacting across US import routes.
Faster Arrivals Meet Constrained Connections
Jelinek said shippers seeking the quickest trans-Pacific option have contributed to congestion at Los Angeles and Long Beach and delays in transferring containers from those gateways to rail. At the same time, he reported increased use of domestic intermodal services as shippers seek alternatives to expensive road transport. He attributed those road costs to capacity constraints and high fuel prices. In his assessment, the combined flows are contributing to congestion at Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Memphis and Atlanta.
The scale of cargo entering Southern California provides context for that pressure. The Port of Los Angeles reported handling 1,042,652 twenty-foot equivalent units in September, its busiest month on record. That measures cargo throughput rather than the time required to deliver a container inland. A record month can therefore demonstrate strong terminal handling while leaving unanswered whether rail transfers, equipment availability and warehouse receiving capacity are keeping pace.
Earlier reporting by The Supply Chainer identified the operational weakness between those stages. “Where coordination breaks down most often is not in one dramatic failure, but in the handoffs,” Chad Schilleman, Vice President of Drayage Services at Trinity Logistics, previously explained. His observations concerned incomplete discharge notices, mismatched rail routing and limited appointment visibility. Those failures help explain how a container can lose its ocean transit advantage without any single part of the inland journey suffering a complete shutdown.
A Different Gateway Still Needs an Inland Plan
Jelinek also reported a significant increase in Houston volumes, describing it as the second-largest port served by his company after Los Angeles. He linked that growth to infrastructure spending and energy projects in the central US, changing sourcing patterns and export demand associated with the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. These are his explanations for the flows the company is seeing, rather than a quantified breakdown of port-wide demand. The distinction matters when importers assess whether an alternative gateway offers spare capacity for their particular cargo.
Changing ports also changes the transport and storage requirements beyond the waterfront. A workable alternative needs compatible inland services, receiving capacity and arrangements for returning equipment. In previous Supply Chainer coverage, Dr Noel Hacegaba, Chief Executive Officer of the Port of Long Beach, said larger importers were “negotiating protections from higher spot-market pricing”. Such protection addresses freight-rate exposure; importers still need to establish whether the booked route can deliver stock within the required window.
Waiting Containers Consume Working Capacity
Jelinek described a response built around additional drivers, chassis and yard space, alongside flexible storage and access to multiple transport modes. More drivers can support earlier container collection, while additional chassis help accommodate longer dwell times. Yard capacity provides somewhere to hold containers when the next movement cannot proceed. These measures address different constraints, so adding one resource will have limited value if another remains unavailable.
Empty containers are part of that calculation. “Additional yard space also helps offset an increase in empties stored as the ability to terminate empties is as challenging as it has been post-COVID congestion,” Jelinek said. An empty awaiting return can continue occupying equipment and space needed for another movement. For importers evaluating a faster service, the operational test should therefore extend through collection, inland delivery and equipment return: each stage determines whether the time purchased at sea survives on land.
