If you aren’t familiar with the website Marine Traffic, you might want to start using it. It allows you to get a much bigger picture of where your cargo’s vessel might be located at any given time. You can see if it’s on its way from China or if it’s finally docked in Long Beach, the number of vessels waiting offshore to dock, and even just the typical routes many vessels are using to cross the world’s oceans.
The screenshot below was pulled from Marine Traffic as I track a vessel that was due into Tacoma on 1/1 but is actually docked in Long Beach currently. Needless to say, the new arrival into Tacoma is now early February. This should just give you an idea of how congested everything is. How the sheer VOLUME of traffic is everywhere. The green ones are container ships and you can use the website to find the other ones. Even the Panama Canal has backlog from both sides.
I would always suggest asking your freight forwarder for updated information as they have contact with the steamship lines. But you can always track on the steamship line yourself or use marine traffic to get a better grasp of where your freight is currently located and why it’s taking so long.
Ports are still completely unsure of when this will be cleared up but with the record breaking US imports, it probably won’t be anytime soon.
