I had to laugh at Biden's big idea to have the ports work 24/7 to get products moving. Anybody with extensive experience with longshoremen know that will translate to maybe 18/24 at best. There are many facets to this problem so I will break down some of them.
On Monday there were 97 container ships and 3 other cargo ships waiting outside the L.A./Long Beach harbors and in the harbor or at docks. They have so many ships at anchor that some are out at Catalina Island 26 miles away. The break in the pipeline at Huntington Beach happened when a 1200' container ship drug it's anchor displacing the pipeline by 1400'. Ships should never be anchored between the offshore rigs and the shoreline in that area but that is where they were instructed to go.
Once the ships dock a whole new host of problems crop up. The docks are filled with full containers that have not been moved out of the port. The railroads can only move them out so fast and the biggest problem is the lack of trucks that can serve the ports. California's EPA has ruled that all trucks serving the ports and railyards cannot be older than 2010 due to emission standards and even some of those must have particulate filters to meet the standards. All trucks must have electronic throttles and no manual throttles allowed. Older trucks from other states are not allowed.
Even if they can get the trucks there is a shortage of chassis available to move the containers. Trucking companies that have their own chassis can get out quicker.
With the docks full of loaded containers there is not much room to store empties to go back to China. China needs more containers than are being sent back empty.
The mega container ships do slow down the operations at the port by trying to put the containers somewhere. As an example the OOCL Hong Kong is about 1300' long and has a loading capacity of 21,413 TEU's. That is how many 20' containers it can hold and half that many 40' containers which are massive numbers.
Here is a picture of L.A. Harbor taken several days ago which illustrates what I just mentioned.
