There was fleeting hope that Southern California port congestion had turned the corner. The number of container ships waiting offshore dipped to the low 60s and high 50s from a record high of 73 on Sept. 19, trans-Pacific spot rates plateaued.

The reality is that the port congestion crisis in Southern California is not getting any better.

The time ships are stuck waiting offshore continues to lengthen. There are simply too many vessels arriving with too much cargo for terminals, trucks, trains and warehouses to handle.

The number of ships at anchor or in holding patterns is once again at record levels. According to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, 79 container ships were waiting off Los Angeles and Long Beach on Thursday, yet another all-time record.

Marine Exchange data shows that ships waiting offshore on Tuesday — including container ships, general cargo vessels and other ships carrying containers — had aggregate capacity of 512,843 twenty-foot equivalent units. To put that in perspective, that is 10% more than the Port of Los Angeles imported during the entire month of September.

Assuming ships are at capacity, how much cargo value is out there in the “floating warehouse”? What’s in each box, and its value, varies dramatically — it can be worth a few thousand dollars or several hundred thousand dollars. But Port of Los Angeles stats provide a good guide.

The total customs value of the Port of Los Angeles’ containerized imports in 2020 was $211.9 billion. Given that imports totaled 4,827,040 TEUs, this equates to an average of $43,899 per import TEU. (Several other sources also estimated average cargo value at around $40,000 per TEU.)  

This suggests that the cargo currently waiting off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is worth over $22 billion, roughly the equivalent of the annual revenues of McDonald’s or the GDP of Iceland.