Preliminary August 2024 TEUs
The Pacific Merchant Shipping Association’s Trade Report is a monthly publication that monitors container traffic through 25 North American seaports, twenty in the United States, three in Canada, and two on Mexico’s West Coast. Unlike other reports, the TEU tallies cited in this report are the actual statistics compiled by the ports themselves, not estimates based on proprietary models or algorithms. Here are the container trade statistics major North America’s seaports have reported for August, in their own numbers.
The Port of Long Beach experienced an expected burst in container traffic in August as cargo owners continued to move higher volumes of cargo through U.S. West Coast ports in anticipation of a potential labor disruption that could shut down ports along the East and Gulf Coast on October 1. The 456,868 inbound loaded TEUs discharged at the Long Beach gateway in Southern California were the highest number of inbound loads in any other month in the port’s history. This represented a 40.4% bump over the preceding August and a 41.5% gain over the pre-pandemic August of 2019. Outbound loads (104,646) were up 12.0% year-over-year but down 16.3% from August 2019. Year-to-date, total container traffic (loads and empties) through the port amounted to 6,087,875 TEUs, a 22.5% increase over the first eight months of 2019.
Across the harbor at the Port of Los Angeles, inbound loads (509,363) were the most the port has handled in a single month since May 2021. The year-over-year gain was 17.6%. The increase since August 2019 was 16.4%. Outbound loads in August (121,744) were down 1.6% from the preceding August, while also down 16.8% from August 2019. Total container traffic through the first eight months of the year at the Southern California gateway (6,631,688) way up 5.1% from the identical period in 2019.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, the Port of Oakland posted historic lows for August. Although the number of laden TEUs discharged at the Northern California gateway this August did amount to a 14.9% bump over last August’s volume, the 83,272 inbound loads the port handled this August represented the second fewest the port recorded in any other August since 2017. Meanwhile, the 59,362 outbound loads that departed from the port last month were the fewest in any August in this century. Not surprisingly, total container traffic YTD (1,513,303) was the lowest since the first eight months of 2015.
Up in the State of Washington, import loads in August at the Northwest Seaport Alliance Ports of Seattle and Tacoma amounted to 123,652, a 49.4% year-over-year gain but just a 10.1% increase over August 2019. Export loads (51,427) were up 18.5% from a year earlier but down 31.3% from August 2019. Total YTD container moves through the two Puget Sound ports (2,137,902) represented 16.6% decline from the same period in 2019.
Across the border in British Columbia, inbound loads through the Port of Vancouver, Canada’s busiest seaport, amounted to 155,676 TEUs, an increase of 14.9% from a year earlier but a 6.7% decline from August 2019. Outbound loads (62,825) were up 12.0% from the previous August but were down 31.8% from the same month in 2019. Total YTD container traffic through the port (2,380,129) represented a gain of 9.8% from the same period in pre-pandemic 2019.
Moving to the Atlantic Coast, the Port of Virginia handled 139,127 loaded inbound TEUs in August, a modest 1.7% year-over-year bump but a 14.5% gain over August 2019. Outbound loads in August (93,663) were up 4.1% from the preceding August and 16.1% higher than the outbound loads reported in August 2019. Total YTD container traffic through the Mid-Atlantic gateway (2,400,056) represented a 21.4% increase over the first eight months of 2019.
At South Carolina’s Port of Charleston, inbound loads in August (99,078) were down 3.1% from a year earlier and 4.0% below August 2019. Outbound loads (52,025) were off by 7.9% year-over-year and 23.6% from the same month in 2019. Total container traffic through August (1,664,017) was up a mere 0.8% from the same period in 2019.
The 244,306 inbound loads discharged at the Port of Savannah in August represented a 20.7% gain over the same month last year and a 12.6% increase over August 2019. Outbound loads at the Georgia port (117,828) were up 16.0% year-over-year but remained 6.2% below the mark set in August 2019. YTD, total container traffic through the port (3,680,293) was up 19.6% over the first eight months of 2019.
Down along the Gulf of Mexico, Port Houston recorded 163,211 inbound loads in August, a year-over-year gain of 9.1% and an imposing 47.9% increase over August 2019. Outbound loads (131,241) were the most of any port in North America in August. Total YTD container moves through the Texas gateway (2,791,127) were up 40.9% over the same period in 2019.
When all the boxes have been counted, the National Retail Federation’s Global Port Tracker (NRF/GPT) estimates that 2.37 million inbound loads will have arrived in August at the thirteen U.S. ports it monitors. That would represent a 20.9% year-over-year increase and the highest volume to have arrived in any month since May 2022. A separate calculation from Descartes Global anticipates 2,479,284 import TEUs will be discharged at U.S. ports, a gain of 12.9% over August 2023.