“I don’t care about how long it takes a ship to cross the ocean. When it gets to the other side, I want my cargo. I don’t want to be told, ‘Oh it went to LA.’ And then it might be 17 days before I get it off the docks,” said Rick Smith, vice president for global transportation at Sears Holdings.
The topic of what could be the worst gridlock to hit LA-Long Beach in decades was a dominant theme in a panel on shipper-carrier relationships on Day 2 of the 8th annual TPM Asia conference organized by JOC Group. The questions asked from the audience revealed the growing frustrations by shippers at the delays being faced at the ports. In an interview, one large import beneficial cargo owner, who did not want to speak on the record, said, “what I am seeing is a port that has historically been reliable is becoming much more uncertain. When we try to bring product in to LA-Long Beach, we’ve seen 2-3 week delays therefore we reverted back to our East Coast strategy.”
The BCO said about LA-Long Beach, “its daily phone calls, trying to pressure either the carrier to advise us on the status, or the cartage agent to tell us if we’re waiting on a chassis, that kind of stuff.”
