LOS ANGELES - U.S. West Coast ports, which reached a labor deal with their workers this summer, gained market share in August from the previous month, while their main rivals on the East Coast lost ground, Descartes Systems Group said on Monday.
Some shippers told Reuters they started sending cargo back to West Coast ports before employers and the longshore union reached a tentative contract agreement covering 22,000 dockworkers on June 15 and employees ratified the deal on Aug. 31. While it is too early to tell if the West Coast labor deal swayed the August results, "we can expect some of the 1 million TEUs that left to come back now that the uncertainty is gone," Chris Jones, an executive vice president at Descartes, said referring to 20-foot equivalent units, a measurement standard for ocean cargo.