Port of NY/NJ Busiest Port in Country

[Rothman]

I attended a meeting regarding CSX's Inland Port in DeWitt, NY last week and representatives from the Port Authority attended (since they're the ones sending the daily trains to DeWitt).  During that meeting, they announced that the Port of NY/NJ has been the busiest port in the country in terms of volume for the past couple of months.  That struck me as incredible, since the ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach typically move more containers by far than NY/NJ.

https://www.panynj.gov/port-authority/en/press-room/press-release-archives/2022-press-releases/port-authority-reports-facility-volumes-for-september-2022.html

[Dirt Roads]

The congestion at the Port of Long Beach/Port of Los Angeles continues to be an issue.  When I worked at POLB back in the mid-1990s, the main bottleneck with the railroads was that the ports would not work third shift due to the high hourly rates imposed by the stevedores unions for midnight shift.  After all of these years, POLB/POLA finally agreed to start working third shift in mid-October 2022 in order to ease the backlog of cargo ships anchored outside the twin ports.  But there was significant concern as to whether the railroads and truckers could actually mobilize to move the freight after it was unloaded.  The backup of anchored ships ended about two weeks ago, and that appears to be due to a recent reduction in freight volume.  Both of those facts have led to the decline in freight volume serviced by the twin ports.

The Port of New York and New Jersey has been experiencing increased freight volume and gained it Number One status after its largest month ever in August 2022.  That being said, POLB and POLA are still close behind at #2 and #3.  The twin ports combined still handle almost twice as much as The PANYNJ.