The number of ship stops at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach fell to a 40-year low

The congestion at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach has led to a backlog of 43 ships berthing on the West Coast, following a record low number of ship calls.More and more container ships are anchoring in San Pedro Bay.At the moment, the on-time rate has dropped to 30 percent.

According to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, which oversees ship traffic in San Pedro Bay, there were 347 fewer ships calling at those ports in 2020 than in 2019.

This is the lowest number of ship stops in 40 years, surpassing the September 11 attacks of 2002, the global financial crisis of 2008-2009 and the Labour crisis of 2014-15.

Cruise ships in particular have been the hardest hit, with ship calls falling from 387 in 2019 to just 92 last year, all of which arrived in the first quarter.The area has been closed to traffic since April 2020, and no cruise ships have stopped there.

Declining demand for fuel during the Covid-19 outbreak has also led to a reduction in the number of tanker ship stops, with 158 fewer during 2020.

The only sector to see a small increase was container ships, which saw an increase in the number of container stops in 2019.Despite this, the number of stops in the first six months of this year fell sharply as the outbreak hit the shipping industry and liner companies suspended flights, meaning that the target is still 80 below the 2018-19 average.

However, demand for container ships in the second half of the year was higher than target, with 57 more vessels now berthed.And that number is still falling, with only two more ships than expected in December, compared with 19 in November.

As of January 5, 35 ships were still moored in San Pedro Bay.The largest of these, MSC Katie (IMO: 9467457) of 16,022 TEUs from MSC Line, arrived on Monday, followed by CMA CGM's 15,000 TEUs CMA CGM J. Adams (IMO: 9780885), which has been berthing for more than a week.SM Lines' 4000 TEU "Singapore" (IMO:9256224), which arrived at port on 21 December, has not been berthing yet.

Due to the repeated epidemic situation in foreign countries, under the circumstance of sealing the country and the city, a large number of containers cannot be unloaded when arriving at the port, and the operation efficiency of the dock is low.While the ports themselves are under pressure, overcrowding in warehouses and distribution centres and a shortage of drivers are slowing the flow of containers out of the terminals, allowing more cargo to be unloaded.The congestion at the wharf causes the transport capacity to be heavily squeezed in the port, thus affecting the overall logistics turnover.