Well I live near Newark and currently there are a bunch of boats there that came from Asia in a month, via Suez & Panama. Its much more efficient than trucking across the whole country.
West coast ports likely move cargo from Asia onto trains destined for much of the central US, which avoids canal fees and bottlenecks, as well as wasted time backtracking.
Is that a common occurrence or is it specifically happening because of the backup on west coast ports? Or is it even part of a bigger macro trend not related to east vs west coast consumption?
> It's much more efficient than trucking across the whole country.
I don't think this checks out on a time perspective. 15 days to get to CA = 15 days for the trucking route, or air. I think both get there under 15 days. Fuel efficiency, maybe, I'd need to do more research. And it seems like the bigger factor is not final destination but the other stops of the shipper, e.g going and dropping in Europe for the Suez.
Actually glad I went on this journey for some learnings along the way, but I guess the point here is that west coast consumption levels have nothing to do with this supply chain issue. I live near you too FWIW, not in this for defending my own west coast dog in this fight, but more to try and see why you were so quick to jump on west coast consumption!
But there are a number of container ships that are bigger than Panamax (the largest size that can fit through the Panama Canal). They can't make it to the East Coast from Asia without going around South America, or else going through Suez.
And: "More efficient than trucking"? You could send them across the country on a train, instead of on a truck...
