There are several reasons for the bottleneck of exports bound for Asia through the West Coast ports. The weak U.S. dollar has combined with growing Asian economies to increase the demand for U.S. goods, raising the need for containers.
But when the U.S. economy cooled and American consumers began tightening their belts, oceangoing shipping lines pulled as many as 30% of their vessels, and a commensurate number of containers, out of the routes from Asia to the West Coast. They moved them to Asia-to-Europe routes and to routes between Asian countries where the economies were more robust, said Paul Bingham, an economist for Global Insight.
Another problem was pure physics, said Asar Ashaf, head of the Washington office of the University of New Orleans' National Ports and Waterways Institute. A ship that can carry 8,000 containers of finished goods such as electronics, toys and apparel from Asia to the U.S. can't carry 8,000 containers of exports from the U.S. back to Asia.
"The exports are heavier -- grains, paper, scrap metals. The ship reaches its tonnage limit much faster, so maybe it is carrying only two-thirds as many containers of exports back to Asia," Ashaf said.
Also, the shipbuilding industry has placed far more emphasis on building container vessels than on the bulk carriers that used to dominate trade in items such as grains and scrap metal. Wallace said the competition for the limited amount of space available on bulk vessels has made using them much more expensive than container ships. Plus, Wallace said, his Asian customers prefer their agricultural goods shipped in sealed containers.
"Once they start using containers, they don't want to go back to bulk," Wallace said.
All of that has combined to make it harder for exporters to find space quickly on container vessels. Spokesman Mark Bagby said that members of Calcot, a Bakersfield-based farmer-owned cooperative with about 1,400 members, said, "We're having a little trouble finding space on the ships," even though they are exporting less.
The export problems have been compounded by a significant change in the way shipping lines view empty containers. They were once so plentiful because of the import boom and huge trade imbalance that the shipping lines "were happy to have anything in them" for the return trip to Asia, said Mike Zampa, a spokesman for APL, a subsidiary of Singapore-based Neptune Orient Lines.
