News / Shippers seek alternatives as east coast port strike looms

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While North American shippers and forwarders nervously await the next developments in the apparent stand-off between dockworkers and terminal operators on the US east coast, carriers’ network planners will be drawing up alternatives should a port shutdown take place.

However, a recent analysis by the eeSea liner database of how shipping services responded to the threat of a widespread rail strike in Canada provides some indication of how carriers may react to a US east coast port strike.

“While the recent rail strike in Canada was short-lived, the lead up was long and arduous. We did see a flurry of port swaps (ie vessels heading to Seattle in lieu of Vancouver) preceding and during the week of the 24-hour work stoppage on 22 August,” eeSea head of operations and forecasting Destine Ozuygur wrote.

“There was a total of 19 completed swaps in the month of August alone, and three that are still active. There were also three vessels observed speeding up in order to make the cut-off before 0h00 on the morning of the strike but failed.

“They ultimately joined the ranks of those that had to inch their delayed arrivals back day-by-day while port operators and carriers alike fought for visibility.

She noted that while port operations bounced back “relatively quickly”, the uncertainty did not disappear: “Blank sailings doubled into Vancouver from a total of six in August to 12 in September. Prince Rupert also saw five blank sailings in August, an uptick from the standard two-to-three per month that it has seen on average in 2024.”

She further noted, and we are seeing this magnified today on the US east coast compared to Canada, that “historically we have observed that the anticipation of a strike alone has the potential to cause a loss in volume and berth planning difficulties for targeted ports.

“All eyes are now focused on the East Coast, where carriers are yet to take significant strategic action but are no doubt weighing the options by the day. While the presence of blanks is undeniable across many East Coast services in the weeks ahead, there is no sizeable pattern that can confidently be assigned to a dedicated avoidance of possible strike actions,” Ms Ozuygur noted.

She pointed out that many North America east coast ports are already struggling with handling services that are wildly off-schedule, mostly due to the Cape of Good Hope diversions and the rough winter weather off South Africa’s southern coast.

And these are likely to affect not only ports which employ ILA labour, but additional ports on the same service strings.

“Along the East Coast, ports that share a spot on the rotation of Red Sea-impacted services like The Alliance’s EC5, exhibit a mixed bag of symptoms. While Halifax has indeed suffered extreme delays from vessels on this service and functions as both the first port of discharge and last load port in North America for the EC5, its average schedule reliability over the past two months has increased positively,” she said.

In contrast, eeSea data shows that Charleston has suffered from increasing congestion since week 34, while average monthly schedule reliability has downgraded.

“Perhaps it’s the relative share of services utilising the South African passage that determines the scale of the effect: Charleston’s share of services sailing past the Cape of Good Hope stands at a whopping 48%, while Halifax has 12% of her total services affected. A massive neighbour like New York/NJ is at 36% with no changes to its usual congestion patterns and an average 12-hour improvement in schedule reliability since July.

“Another large neighbour for comparison, Savannah, has a 40% share of Red Sea impacted services and has seen a 12-hour decline in average schedule reliability since the start of July, along with characteristic ups and downs in congestion.

“Regardless of the scale of relative impact, the dangerous seasonal weather conditions surrounding the Cape this time of year have only served to increase existing delays on these routes over the past three weeks.”

Other carriers will now be assessing what capacity will be available in neighbouring ports – the Caribbean transshipment hubs of Kingston, Caucedo or Bahamas Freeport may be one option; Canadian gateways such as Halifax, Montreal and St John are clearly another; or there may even by capacity in West African ports where US east coast boxes on the water if/when a strike is called could be utilised as way-point storage areas.