is diverting shipping and trucking around one of the busiest ports on America's East Coast, creating delays and raising costs in the latest disruption to global supply chains., ship traffic entering and leaving the Port of Baltimore was suspended indefinitely. That will require rerouting vessels or their cargo to other ports, potentially causing congestion and delays for importers, said Judah Levine, head of research for the global freight booking platform Freightos.
"Timewise, it's going to hurt us a lot,'' said Russell Brehm, the terminal manager in Baltimore for Lee Transport, which trucks hazardous materials such as petroleum products and chemicals. The loss of the bridge will double to two hours the time it takes Lee to get loads from its terminal in Baltimore's Curtis Bay to the BJ's gasoline station in the waterfront neighborhood of Canton, he estimated.on vessels in the Red Sea.
“It’s a scramble because each of those containers has now a new journey to clear customs. You’ve got to get a different truck to pick it up at a different port. It creates a whole lot of downstream work,” he said. Still, Levine thinks the bridge collapse is unlikely to have a big impact on global trade, certainly nothing like the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. First, Baltimore is not a major port for container vessels. And second, shipping traffic from Asia is in the annual lull following China's Lunar New Year holiday.
The Port of Baltimore is one of the largest vehicle handling ports in the U.S., and a lengthy closure could disrupt the supply of. In 2022, Baltimore ranked No. 1 with more than 750,000 vehicles going through the port, 70% of them imports, according to the publication Automotive Logistics. “Depending on the length of the disruption, we could see inventories drawn down,” Jason Miller, interim chair of the supply chain management department at Michigan State University. said.