Why congestion is moving
Above normalWhy is US port congestion rising right now?
8 ships awaiting berth across US ports as of week of Aug 24, 2026. Broadly steady for 3 weeks.
Data through week of Aug 24, 2026 · source last checked Sep 1, 2026 · page revised Sep 1, 2026
Cite
- Ships awaiting berth
About this data
- Source
- MARAD and the Marine Exchange, via BTS Supply Chain and Freight Indicators
- Series
- Container ships awaiting berth, all US ports
- Basis
- Queue count, not a dwell time
- Geography
- All US container ports
- Unit
- vessels
- Calculation
- Weekly reading
- Last observation
- week of Aug 24, 2026
- Update frequency
- Weekly
The national ship queue has been broadly steady for 3 weeks, with no sustained move in either direction. The queue is 8 ships, near its trailing-12-month normal of 9 ships. The national at-anchor count rose by 2 to 8 ships over the same span (BTS). The LA/Long Beach truck planning-time index reads 2.19 for Jul 2026 (FHWA via BTS; 1.0 is free-flow, published about two months behind). The market is in peak shipping season, when holiday-inventory imports typically crest.
US port congestion has been broadly steady for 3 weeks: the national ship queue shows no sustained move in either direction. For the current picture, see the US ship queue and the import-friction board.
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | 8 ships | 6 ships | +33.3% |
| Month over month | 8 ships | 6 ships | +33.3% |
| Year over year | 8 ships | 15 ships | -46.7% |
| vs 5-yr median | 8 ships | 16 ships | -50.0% |
What makes port congestion rise
Port congestion is a queueing problem: ships arrive faster than berths, cranes, yards, trucks and rail can clear what they bring, and the backlog shows up first as ships waiting offshore. The national ship queue this page tracks is the most current public signal of that imbalance, and a handful of structural factors drive it every cycle.
Import demand is the first lever. When US importers pull cargo hard, ahead of tariffs, ahead of the holidays, or restocking after a lull, the monthly TEU volumes climb, and a terminal already running near capacity has no slack to absorb the surge. Congestion is usually demand outrunning fixed infrastructure, not a single failure.
Terminal and labor throughput set the ceiling. A berth works only as fast as its cranes and gangs, and anything that slows the waterside, labor actions, equipment shortages, a terminal outage, lengthens every vessel call and backs the queue up behind it.
The landside can jam the waterside. Boxes that cannot leave the terminal, because chassis are scarce, rail cars are late, or warehouse doors are full, pile up in the yard, and a congested yard slows the cranes above it. The truck planning-time index is the public read on that landside friction, and the LA import-box dwell buckets show boxes aging in the yard.
Ship bunching amplifies everything. Weather closures, canal restrictions and upstream port delays bunch arrivals into clusters, and a cluster hitting a full terminal creates a queue even when average volume is unremarkable. The coast-wide at-anchor counts are the widest early-warning lens on ships stacking up offshore.
The calendar loads the dice. Peak season from late summer through fall crests import volumes into the same fixed capacity every year, so the same disruption bites harder in September than in March.
None of these act alone: a rising queue is usually demand or bunching leading, with terminal, labor and landside friction deciding how fast it clears. The import-friction board gives the per-complex read, and the easing twin of this page covers the same system running in reverse.