Nearly 35,700 containers stuck waiting for trains at LA–Long Beach

Nearly 35,700 import containers were sitting on marine terminals at Los Angeles and Long Beach on Oct. 26, waiting for on-dock trains that couldn't take them away fast enough. The backlog is the clearest sign yet that the rail side of the busiest US port complex, not the docks themselves, is where this peak season is breaking down.

The Dwell's compilation of the ports' daily rail reports counted 35,688 rail-bound containers, of which 10,562 — roughly 30%, or nearly three in ten — had been on terminal for at least nine days. The figures count individual boxes, not twenty-foot-equivalent units, so they aren't directly comparable to headline port statistics.

The skew matters. Los Angeles held 19,626 of the waiting containers, and 8,133 of those — 41.4% — had crossed the nine-day mark. Long Beach held 16,062, with 2,429, or 15.1%, that old. Put simply: the wait is bad at both ports, but it's nearly three times worse at LA.

What does this change for shippers?

Longer terminal waits translate directly into longer inland transit times and less predictable delivery windows for anyone moving imports by intermodal rail. Pacific Merchant Shipping Association data shows average rail-container dwell across the complex rose to 7.19 days in September, up from 6.75 days in August. Even truck-destined containers felt it, with local truck dwell inching up to 3.18 days from 2.95 days.

The cause is volume meeting an equipment shortage. Both ports posted record monthly volumes in September — Los Angeles processed roughly 1.04 million TEUs, Long Beach 997,177 TEUs. PMSA tied the dwell increase to an extended peak shipping season and heavy cargo flows. C.H. Robinson, in its October market update, went further and named the constraint: Southern California intermodal railcar shortages, with limited equipment availability extending import dwell and slowing inland movement. The broker also flagged empty-container repositioning as a complicating factor, while noting truck-destined freight is moving comparatively normally.

BNSF and Union Pacific serve the port complex. Neither they nor the ports had commented when FreightWaves reached out.

Two caveats keep the picture honest. The Oct. 26 counts are a snapshot at a single moment, not an average waiting time, and they don't prove every container in the inventory is overdue. And offshore, there is no matching vessel queue: The Dwell's congestion tracker, drawing on Maritime Administration and Marine Exchange data, reported just one ship awaiting a berth during the week of Oct. 26. The congestion is on the apron, not the anchorage.

Could a strike make it worse?

Possibly, and soon. The Pacific Maritime Association warned Oct. 27 that roughly 250 port watchmen could strike as early as Sunday, Nov. 1, affecting eight container terminals. Members of ILWU Local 26 voted to authorize the walkout. According to the employer association, the exposed terminals handle about 85% of Long Beach cargo and 33% of Los Angeles cargo.

A walkout on top of a 35,000-box rail backlog would hit forwarders and BCOs at the worst possible point in the flow — after discharge, before inland dispatch. Watch the Nov. 1 deadline; if the watchmen walk and the railcar supply doesn't improve, terminal dwell numbers get worse before they get better.