The Federal Maritime Commission is rolling out a series of new initiatives focused on container shipping as part of an effort to improve trade flows and reduce the problems faced by shippers across the United States. The Port of Los Angeles says it is now literally stuffed with empty containers, blaming the piles of containers waiting to leave the port for the latest obstacle to reducing the terminal's backlog.

As expected, much of the FMC's November monthly meeting focused on supply chain issues and their impact on trade. During the one-hour open session of the monthly conference, the FMC was briefed on U.S. macroeconomic indicators and their related impact on shipping, the state of U.S. and international maritime trade, ship capacity and pricing. The meeting continued in closed sessions to review the revenue and pricing of ocean carriers, capacity, canceled voyages and port calls.

In the new initiative launched by FMC, Commissioner Rebecca F. Dye will lead six supply chain innovation teams to identify and implement improvements to the process and timing of container return and delivery to marine terminals.

"Achieving dual mobility for truckers will increase trucker productivity, eliminate the constant source of conflict for container returns, and address the shortage of appointment systems and chassis," Commissioner Day said. "The earliest return date confusion is a terrible problem for U.S. exporters. This reform will also eliminate demurrage and demurrage fees for U.S. agricultural exporters that do not comply with our interpretation rules."

One of the team's goals is to focus on "dual mobility," where the truck returns a container and picks up a new container on the same journey into the port. The teams will also work to bring certainty and predictability to the earliest return date process to address exporter complaints about unreliable deadlines for shipping goods to the terminal. They will focus on improving conditions at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and at the ports of New York and New Jersey. The teams will include executives from each of the ocean carriers operating in the alliance and the ocean terminal operators serving them. The first meeting of the team will be held on December 1.

The FMC is focusing on containers as ports are taking action, citing the accumulation of empty containers as one of the biggest obstacles to importing cargo. Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said in his monthly update on port operations that Los Angeles is overloaded with empty ships and they need to ship them out of the dock to make more room.

"We now have about 65,000 empty containers on the docks," Seroka said. He told reporters that it has risen by 18% in recent weeks. Although shipping companies want to ship empty ships, they must make more efforts to get them out of the port's yard. On an average week, the port repositions 90,000 empty containers, but Seroka said that number is now up 30 percent, and they are coming in faster than they are leaving.

Los Angeles said it had seen Seroka, known as a "scavenger," come in from major shipping lines to help clear empty cargo from terminals. Six of the sweeper ships delivered 17,500 TEU, with more on the way, and a further 2,500 TEU will be delivered in addition to the ships loaded on board before departure at the scheduled stops. While he said the ports had made progress on the decline in the number of long-stay containers, he said they needed to redouble their efforts to get the empty containers moving.

The action by the FMC and the Port of Los Angeles came as the Southern California Marine Exchange reported that the trend was headed in the wrong direction earlier this week.

Yesterday, November 16, they set four more records, illustrating the continued growth of the pile-up. The total number of vessels in the port or waiting for dock space at the San Pedro Bay complex reached 179, an increase of nine vessels from the previous peak. The anchorage is still fully loaded with 52 ships, with another 62 waiting for a space record. These include 35 container ships at anchor and a record 51 waiting to go to sea. A total of 26 container ships are classified as large container ships, meaning they each have a capacity of more than 10,000 TEU. These ships alone account for nearly 320,000 TEU. By the end of the week, another 34 vessels, including 15 container ships, will have arrived in port.