Hapag-Lloyd Warns of Port of Oakland Delays

Delays at Port of Oakland Still an Issue

Carriers continue to experience delays at the Californian Port of Oakland amid labor shortages that have seen several vessels idling at anchor.

Aside to labor shortages, the delays have also been attributed to yard congestion and continuous demand pressures faced by the local chassis pools.

Seven container ships have been reported to be at anchor on June 22nd in the San Francisco Bay due to the labor shortage.

German carrier Hapag-Lloyd said in a customer advisory that “delays beyond our control on import door and rail moves over the Port of Oakland have to be expected.”

Hapag-Lloyd said that the labor shortages that continue to impact the Port of Oakland have resulted at times in 2-gang limit allocations per vessel by PMA.

“In addition, yard congestion and overutilization of the local chassis pools have further deteriorated turn times causing import cargo to dwell for both rail and local door,” the company added.

May was the busiest month in nearly four years at the Port of Oakland. The port handled 213,260 cargo containers last month.

The total volume of import, export and empty containers was up 3.8 percent in May from a year ago. Shipments of empty containers back to origins in Asia were up 20 percent. The empty repositioning indicates that ports are still rebalancing containers dislocated by wintertime trade slowdowns.