Just how many containers of cargo are stuck off California’s coast?

With 70 or more container ships waiting at anchor or drifting off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, how deep of a hole are the terminals actually in?

To answer that question, American Shipper analyzed data from the Marine Exchange of Southern California on exactly which ships are stuck out there.

On Monday, the 70 container ships waiting offshore had a total capacity of 432,909 twenty-foot equivalent units. To put the enormity of that number in perspective, that is above the inbound container volume that the Port of Long Beach handled in the entire month of August. It is about what Charleston handles inbound in four months and what Savannah handles in two.

The combined import throughput of both Los Angeles and Long Beach in August was 893,118 TEUs. Assuming ships waiting offshore are effectively full, that capacity roughly equates with volume, and that terminals are able to process vessels at the same pace they did in August, the anchorages and drift areas could only be completely cleared if no ships arrived for the next 14 days.

But there is no letup in arrivals in sight. Vessel-positioning data from MarineTraffic confirms that a steady stream of container ships remains en route across the Pacific, destined for Los Angeles.

Container ship en route to the Port of Los Angeles as of Tuesday (Map: MarineTraffic)

How long ships wait for berths

The Port of Los Angeles publishes the average waiting period for a ship to reach one of its berths. On Tuesday, that number rose to an all-time high of nine days (calculated on a 30-day rolling average basis).

To gauge how much capacity has been stuck waiting for how long, American Shipper looked at aggregate TEUs by arrival date.

Forty-two ships with a total capacity of 279,532 TEUs arrived in port waters in the seven days through Monday. That’s 66% of the total tonnage waiting offshore. Another 23 ships with total capacity of 135,108 TEUs arrived between one and two weeks prior to Monday, representing a further 31%. The remaining few ships arrived in late August.

Chart: American Shipper based on data from Marine Exchange of Southern California

The ship waiting longest in the queue as of Monday, according to the Marine Exchange, was the 1,713-TEU AS Serafina, which arrived almost a month ago, on Aug. 25.

Several larger container ships have suffered waits of beyond one week. The 13,092-TEU Maersk Elba arrived Sept. 7; the 11,142-TEU MSC Avni on Sept. 9; the 11,356-TEU CMA CGM Callisto on Sept. 11; the 10,055-TEU Hyundai Neptune and 14,036-TEU MSC Livorno on Sept. 12; and the 14,026-TEU ONE Blue Jay on Sept. 13.

Arriving ships have gotten smaller

A significant change over the course of this year’s congestion crisis is that the average capacity of ships calling in Los Angeles/Long Beach has decreased.

During the current peak period, new services have been added that use smaller vessels, pulling the average down. This means that Southern California’s terminals must handle more ships to reach the same throughput.

During the peak earlier this year, on Feb. 1, there were 40 container ships at anchor, which at the time seemed enormous but now seems middling. The total cargo capacity of anchored ships then was 322,721 TEUs, 25% below current levels. Of ships at anchor on Feb. 1, 15 were 10,000 TEUs or larger, or 38% of the total count. The average capacity in the Feb. 1 queue was 8,068 TEUs.

In contrast, as of Monday, there were 17 ships larger than 10,000 TEUs at anchor or drifting, representing only 24% of the total ship count. The average capacity of all ships in the queue was down to 6,184 TEUs — around three-quarters of the average ship size on Feb. 1.

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Just how many containers of cargo are stuck off California’s coast?

How long ships wait for berths

Arriving ships have gotten smaller

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