Your Port Strategy Is Killing Your Supply Chain

Here is what the math actually says: every day a 40-foot container sits idle at the Port of Los Angeles costs between $180 and $320 in demurrage charges alone, depending on the carrier. Stack another 6,000 containers behind it waiting for dock space, terminal capacity, or chassis availability, and you have created a invisible tax on every manufacturing operation along the West Coast. That tax is climbing. Dwell times have swung from 4.1 days in 2019 to their current level, and nobody in the supply chain has actually adapted operations to match reality.