The Port of Oakland continued its yearlong rollercoaster of up
and down monthly container volumes with another down month in August. The total
volume of containers moved last month was about four percent lower than in August
2011.
California’s third-busiest port saw a total of almost 207,000
TEUs last month, a decrease of 4.3 percent from the number Oakland moved during
the same month in 2011. It was the fifth month out of eight so far during this calendar
year that volumes were down compared with the same month last year.
Oakland saw nearly across-the-board declines in all categories
in August, including full exports, full imports and empty exports.
Port terminals moved just more than 70,300 full, imported TEUs
during the month, a decline of 7.4 percent compared with August 2011. It imported
81,400 full TEUs, which was a nearly four percent drop from the same month last
year.
And although the 22,152 empty TEUs imported represented a 4.8
percent decline from August’s 2011 numbers, Oakland did see an improvement in one
category: the number of empty TEUs exported.
Just more than 33,000 empty containers were shipped out from
Oakland last month, representing a 2.3 percent increase over August 2011 and continuing
a trend of monthly increases in the category dating back to April.
For the calendar year-to-date, Oakland has moved a grand total
of 1.55 million TEUs, an increase of 0.2 percent from the same eight-month period
in 2011.
