The epidemic has been going on for more than two years. Affected by this, LA / LB port in the United States was paralyzed by the shopping boom of consumers.

At present, the number of container ships waiting to berth at these two ports has dropped to the normal level at the beginning of the epidemic.

According to the data on the official website of LA port, only 8 container ships were waiting to berth outside LA / LB port on Monday.

Kip Louttt, executive director of the Southern California Maritime exchange, said: "we only had this number before the outbreak."

In fact, before the outbreak of the epidemic, the normal situation in these two ports was that there was no ship or at most only one ship waiting to dock.

However, in October 2020, the number was gradually rising. Until the beginning of this year, the number of waiting ships reached 109.

Statistics show that at this time last year, there were nearly 50 container ships waiting outside the port.

While the situation along the coast of Southern California is approaching the normal state before the pandemic, the situation for inland transportation is not the same. Compared with the peak period, it is improved but still tense.

As of yesterday, there were 54610 imported containers on the terminal, a decrease of 43% compared with last October. Among them, 29788 containers are waiting for railway transportation, and 17900 have been waiting for 9 days or more.

In the past 30 days, the average stay time of local containers on the dock of LA port was 3.7 days, and the average stay time of containers transported by rail was 8.1 days.

It can be seen from past experience that the congestion bottleneck of LA / LB port is the most obvious manifestation caused by the epidemic. The backlog of cargo forced ships to wait for two weeks or more and led to record high ocean freight charges.

Some experts pointed out that the decrease in the number of ships queuing at LA / LB port was partly due to the slowdown of import demand and the overstock of American companies.

Another part of the reason is that the transportation volume is transferred to the ports along the east coast and the Gulf of Mexico, which makes the number of ships queuing up at the ports along the east coast and the Gulf of Mexico constantly increase.

Gene Seroka, executive director of the port authority of Los Angeles, once said: "cargo owners who hope to re plan the route come to Los Angeles, and we are ready to help at any time."

(Related reading: the import volume in July is still at a high level, but the port of Los Angeles is expected to slow down in August)

Besides, due to the increase in the backlog of ships at the port, shippers need to pay higher fees for transportation that takes longer than the scheduled time. 

In the past two months, the drop in spot freight rates from China to the west of the United States was higher than that to the east of the United States.