Los Angeles posts near-record cargo while New York faces rising truck delays

The Port of Los Angeles just posted its second-busiest July ever, moving 960,464 containers in a single month, yet almost no ship is waiting outside it.

The Marine Exchange counted one vessel at anchor off Los Angeles and Long Beach during the week of August 17, as The Dwell reported on August 18 citing MARAD. At the same time, the drayage-window congestion measure around New York and New Jersey hit 2.37, compared to 2.19 for the San Pedro Bay complex, meaning a trucker planning a pickup window there must set aside more than double the free-flow time, according to FHWA data published by The Dwell in June 2026. The busiest ports in America have swapped problems without anyone directing the change.

Temporary 10 percent global tariffs that started in February expired on July 23; a day later, a new round of Section 301 tariffs of 10 to 12.5 percent took effect on 60 economies covering most of America’s imports, as gCaptain reported on August 18. At stake is the pull-forward: retailers moved merchandise ahead of the late-July tariff shift, which drove peak season volumes into June, when Los Angeles alone moved more than a million containers. Gene Seroka, the port's executive director, described it as businesses moving cargo whenever a window opens in an evolving trade environment, speaking to gCaptain on August 18.

Two years of tariff roulette have taught every importer in the country that the calendar is a weapon. The National Retail Federation, tracking with Hackett Associates, projects imports at major US ports will total 2.21 million containers for July, down 7.6 percent from last year, and 2.22 million for August, down 4.2 percent, before a steeper drop through autumn, gCaptain reported on August 18. Volume is falling even as the rush to beat deadlines keeps distorting when boxes arrive. The season no longer has a season.

The receiving end

The Port of New York and New Jersey sits on the receiving end of that distortion. It moved 4.43 million containers in the first half of 2026, flat with last year, but June alone jumped 11.9 percent to 769,422 containers, with loaded boxes up 7.6 percent, according to Container News on August 3. The Port Authority credited an earlier, front-loaded peak season shaped by trade policy. The East Coast gateway is absorbing the late wave of the same pull-forward that Los Angeles has already finished digesting.

Seroka's port wants throughput without congestion, because gridlock in 2021 cost it cargo and left a half-decade reputational scar, and its terminals now hold vessel waits near one day even at record volume, ShipUniverse noted on August 19. The Port Authority across the Hudson wants to regain the cargo it lost when shippers fled West Coast labor risk, and it is winning that contest: its gateway was the second-busiest in America for loaded containers in June (Container News, Aug 3).

Ocean carriers want Panama Canal and Red Sea routings that help East Coast all-water services to keep generating revenue, and the importers—Walmart, Target, and every mid-size retailer—want boxes landed before the next tariff letter arrives. Each actor moves logically; together they have built a traffic jam on one coast and a victory lap on the other.

The history that fits is 2022, almost in reverse. That year the queues migrated the opposite way. After the major Los Angeles anchorage backup of 2021, cargo shifted east, and by spring 2022 more ships waited off New York and Savannah than off San Pedro Bay, with East and Gulf ports outgrowing the West Coast for thirteen straight months, as Sourcing Journal reported in 2022, citing John McCown’s port report.

New York learned then that a queue, once started, perpetuates itself. Trucks stack, chassis scatter, containers pile up on terminals, and the yard chokes before the waterways do. The truck index at 2.37 is the same early warning light, two years later, now pointing in the other direction.

The counter-example

This is not 2021. America has added more terminal capacity, the railroads have rebalanced equipment, and the total volume is declining, not rising. National imports are down year over year, as gCaptain reported on August 18. A queue built on a one-time tariff deadline should clear by October, not compound. If the truck index rolls over in September, the whole congestion story was a head fake, and the honest read is that both coasts are running hot and cold on the same shrinking pie.

If the queue does grow, truckers and warehouse operators around Port Newark eat the idle hours first, as a 2.37 planning index means drivers burn a working day to fetch a box. Second, importers pay through storage fees and missed shelves, since a box stuck a week in Elizabeth, New Jersey is a holiday order that misses its store. Third, carriers profit, at least initially: Drewry’s World Container Index listed a 40-foot box at $4,297 on August 6, up 77 percent from a year earlier. Rate spikes reward whoever holds capacity while boxes wait, and that is the shipping lines, not the shops whose goods sit in the yard.

Every congestion scare since 2021 has shifted a slice of cargo toward whichever coast proved it could keep flowing. Los Angeles now makes that case with data. Record July volume, a one-ship queue, and public promises that it can absorb more if routes shift, as ShipUniverse reported on August 19. New York makes the opposite case by accident. Shippers watching the truck index do not read port authority press releases; they see their own drayage invoices, and invoices move cargo.

The Port Authority’s July loaded import count, due in mid-September, coming in above June’s pace while the truck planning-time index climbs past 2.4, and the Marine Exchange queue off the Kill van Kull growing past a handful of vessels would confirm the strain. What would negate the strain. The index dropping toward 2.0 by October with the queue empty, showing the East Coast absorbed the pull-forward cleanly and the whole story was timing, not stress.

America did not fix its port congestion problem after 2021; it taught one coast to hide it. The boxes have not stopped racing the tariff calendar; they have simply shifted where they pile up.

Los Angeles spent five years buying back its reputation in concrete, cranes, and appointment systems, and its rival across the country is now left holding the bag, one idle trucker and one stuck container at a time. The queue always goes somewhere. This year it goes where the contracts went.