Port of NY/NJ Overtakes LA Ports as Nation's Busiest

Just when the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach appear to be getting a handle on the logistics nightmare that has plagued SoCal ports since the pandemic began—containers clogging things up as far as the eye can see—LA’s ports are facing an unprecedented reckoning.

While LA has been busy cleaning up the mess at its ports by moving out a mountain of containers that blocked the swift movement of goods for most of the past two years, insult was added to injury as LA’s ports were defrocked of their title as the heavyweight champion of US cargo shipments.

Cover your ears, Dodger fans and we’ll say this softly: based on global cargo statistics, the Port of New York and New Jersey became the nation’s busiest port in August—a paradigm shift confirmed with the September stats, which were released at the end of last month.

The Port of NY/NJ, leading a trend this year that has seen the East Coast dominate the movement of trade, handled 35% more cargo in September 2022 that it did in the pre-pandemic September of 2019.

Port officials at the NY/NJ harbor are expressing confidence that the October stats, expected next week, will prove this is not a temporary blip.

“There are no indications that this level of cargo, compared to what it has been in the past, is going to be reduced. The big picture is we expect the record levels of cargo to continue,” said Rick Cotton, executive director for the Port of NY/NJ, in an interview with CNBC.

West Coast cargo volumes, measured in twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs)—the standard measure of container traffic—have plunged in the second half of 2022, dropping below 1.5M, while East Coast container traffic soared above 2M.

In September, the Port of NY/NJ handled 842K TEUs, while the ports of Long Beach and LA handled 743K and 709K, respectively—a precipitous drop for LA, which usually outpaces Long Beach.

In addition to the backlog of containers in LA, a big driver of the cargo shift to East Coast ports has been the stalled contract negotiations between West Coast dockworkers and West Coast ports, which have dragged on for more than three months with no resolution in sight.

The confidence displayed by Port of NY/NJ officials that they can defend their new title as the US cargo king is supported by the nation’s freight railroads, which are upgrading their service to the East Coast, and especially NY/NJ.

A good example is Norfolk Southern, which recently began offering a new service that will expand grain exports routed through the Port of NY/NJ.

“We expect the East Coast trend to continue, and our railroad is ready to deliver,” Ed Elkins, executive VP at Norfolk Southern, told CNBC. “The Port of New York and New Jersey is a growth engine and gateway to the world, and Norfolk Southern is primed to support that growth.”

Of course, that depends on whether the railroads are actually running: as this is being written, three major railroad unions have rejected a proposed contract, raising the specter of a national rail strike in the US just in time for the holidays.