I am a member of ILWU 13. A couple thoughts after reading the comments:
The zoning change is for TEU storage outside the port. The port itself was not subject to that rule.
The Port of Los Angeles is a landlord and is not directly involved in operations.
Private companies, such as APM, EverPort, and others, rent piers/berths and are responsible for the actual operations and logistics.
Some speculation: recently I’ve heard of some ships not even waiting to load empty TEU’s as they normally would and instead they are immediately leaving for China, literally empty. I suspect this behavior is what turned the congestion we had before into the quasi deadlock we have now.
Seems like more of a tragedy of the commons, with each ship (A) assuming it's fine to leave empty because some other ship (B) will grab the empty containers. That's all well and good until (A) comes back, and then it sits there waiting like everyone else.
Going back empty works once. Or more times if you're headed to a different market, I suppose.
I believe that's not the price for the physical box but rather "a container's worth of shipping". Empty containers are probably going up in price a lot now too - I don't really see why Ryan thinks there needs to be military intervention here. A shortage of empties in China and a surplus in the USA will get resolved real quick by people on the ground (=within the latencies afforded by the slow speed of ships themselves) as there's money to be made there.
This is the question that ties into mine — if the economic incentives have changed (i.e. there is no penalty for renters of containers to not get containers back to their primary shipper) then this is a perfectly reasonable response to the change from Covid to today — i.e. the new game is moving the ship as fast as possible with no downtime. If the demurrage is still incurred, then there’s some other alternatives that do not appear to be completely without nefarious intent.
If a single extra trip is lucrative enough and at current rates it’s 5-10 regular prices that would make sense to forgo loading in the us and just hurry home
It might be other forces driving their decision. Maybe the ships are booked and are already late to pickup next load with penalty clauses for delay, or the port has other costs that mean it wants to speed up getting the next ship unloaded.
> ... recently I’ve heard of some ships not even waiting to load empty TEU’s as they normally would and instead they are immediately leaving for China, literally empty.
If this is happening, what would be the consequences of allowing even more TEUs to be stored on the US side?
Shit is going to take longer and be more expensive to come from China because when there isn't a TEU available you have to wait for one to be fabbed and pay for it.
The zoning change is for TEU storage outside the port. The port itself was not subject to that rule.
The Port of Los Angeles is a landlord and is not directly involved in operations.
Private companies, such as APM, EverPort, and others, rent piers/berths and are responsible for the actual operations and logistics.
Some speculation: recently I’ve heard of some ships not even waiting to load empty TEU’s as they normally would and instead they are immediately leaving for China, literally empty. I suspect this behavior is what turned the congestion we had before into the quasi deadlock we have now.