Source from Freightwaves; writer: Greg Miller

At the height of lastyear’s “will Christmas be canceled?” supply chain freak-out, the ports of LosAngeles and Long Beach — with the Biden administration’s backing — proposed ahighly controversial fee on import containers that sat too long in terminal yards.

The mere threat of thisfee, announced on Oct. 25 for implementation Nov. 15, seemed to initially chasemore boxes out the gates, as designed. Every week since then, like clockwork,the ports have cited progress and announced that the fee enforcement would bepostponed until the following week.

Now, the containerdwell numbers are getting worse and becoming increasingly hard to sugarcoat.

Couldthat proposed fee — $100 a day for each container dwelling too long,compounding an additional $100 per day thereafter — ever actually be charged?

Long-dwelling containers in Long Beach

Data from Long Beach clearly shows the culprit for the resurgence.Long-dwelling containers moving by truck are around half what they were sevenmonths ago. In contrast, containers moving by rail are piling up, risingsteadily since March.

Long-dwelling containers in Los Angeles

The number of import containers in Los Angeles dwelling nine days ormore sank to around 10,000 in early February. It’s now almost triple that.