The deterioration in truck turn times at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach the past six months was due primarily to near-record container volumes at the ports and a dislocation of chassis. A truck capacity crunch, labor slowdowns and a half-dozen other events were simply irritants that made the problem worse.

The troubling message to take away from Noronha’s research for the largest U.S. port complex, and for other large container gateways, is that growing container volumes carried by bigger ships that discharge their loads in a narrow window of time are forcing ports to their saturation capacity.

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