Port of Los Angeles to move to 24/7 service to address supply chain bottlenecks

The Port of Los Angeles will move to service 24 hours a day, seven days a week in order to try to address global supply chain bottlenecks, the White House announced on Wednesday.

“The Port of Los Angeles is announcing 24/7 service. We have the CEO-level business commitments to back that up. And these commitments are critical. The supply chain is essentially in the hands of the private sector, so we need the private sector to up to help solve these problems,” a senior administration official said. 

The White House also announced on Wednesday that major goods carriers Walmart, FedEx and UPS will move to working around the clock as well.

The announcements come ahead of President Biden’s meeting on Wednesday with stakeholders, including Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, to discuss collective efforts to address global transportation supply chain bottlenecks.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union has made a commitment to staffing 24/7, and the terminal operators in the port will be responsible for booking the cargo movements in the off-hours.

“Labor has pledged that they’ll be there,” the official said.

The port of Long Beach has been working 24/7 for the past three weeks, the official said.

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach represent 40 percent of all containers that enter the country, and the U.S. has seen a record 30 percent increase in import and export containers in the first six months of this year compared to last year, according to the White House.

Overall, U.S. ports have had a record inbound throughput this year, which is up about 18 percent.  

“We should recognize that it takes effort to ramp up to 24/7 operations. But what we have with this announcement is a very strong signal to the rest of the goods movement chain that these ports are open for business, they’ll operate around the clock. It’s time for the rest of the goods chain to do that,” the official said.