throughout the months of August and September to prepare for the holidays.
Loutitt stated ‘Part of the problem is the ships are double or triple the size of the ships we were seeing 10 or 15 years ago, they take longer to unload. You need more trucks, more trains, and more warehouses to put the cargo.’
But the additional traffic comes as labor shortages are affecting inland transportation, such as trucking and railroads, meaning shipping containers are not being moved to distribution centers and warehouses quickly enough,
Michael Witnynksi, CEO of Dollar Tree, which relies heavily on imports from China, said one vessel had to be turned back due to a crewmember testing positive for Covid-19.
‘To give you a real-life example of the kinds of challenges we’re seeing, one of our dedicated charters was recently denied entry into China because a crew member tested positive for COVID, forcing the vessel to return to Indonesia and change the entire crew before continuing, Overall, the voyage was delayed by two months.’
Witnyinksi also said that he had been told by a freight forwarder in San Francisco that voyage times from Shangai to Chicago had jumped from 35 days to 73.
