FORT WORTH, Texas — Over the weekend BNSF Railway set a new annual on-dock container record at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., when it surpassed 1.5 million lifts for the year.
“Last week, we surpassed the previous annual record of 1,480,727 lifts, set back in 2017,” BNSF said on social media today.
The record comes amid a surge of imports through Southern California, which has been partly the result of shippers trying to avoid potential labor disruptions at ports on the U.S. East and Gulf coasts, as well as at Canadian West Coast ports.
In the past four months, BNSF’s Southern California port volume milestones include the second-best November on record; October as the best month ever; September as the third-best month; and August as the fourth best.
Total container volume at the Port of Long Beach is up 20.2% this year through October, while at the neighboring Port of Los Angeles volume was up 19%.
Amazing things can happen when Gov. Newsom relaxed the stupid container stack rule at the ports.
Also makes a big difference when ports spend heavily on direct dockside rail service and automation. Two things that Port of LA and Port of Long Beach have done and believe their respective direct dockside rail investment is in terms of several hundreds of million dollars. They are taking a lot of trucks and dryage out on the front end of the equation and leaving to the last mile on the back end.
..
Savannah is doing same thing and will continue to dominate East Coast for considerable amount of time. Georgia inland port investment via rail transfer being part of the mix