Friday, October 19, 2012

Monthly Traffic Volumes Down Again at Port of Oakland


Overall container volumes at the Port of Oakland were down last month from the same period last year, the sixth time this calendar year that numbers were down from the corresponding month during the previous year.

The total volume of containers moved last month was nearly four-and-a-half percent lower than in September 2011, according to newly released port data.

Shipping terminals at California’s third-busiest port saw a total of about 191,500 TEUs last month, a decrease of 4.4 percent from the number Oakland moved during the same month in 2011.

The reason for the overall decline was a sizable drop in imported and exported full containers. Although the number of empty TEUs that were shipped during the month rose slightly year-over-year, it wasn’t enough to counter the decline in full TEU exports.

The port moved just 65,425 full, imported TEUs during the month, a decline of 6.9 percent compared with September 2011; it imported 75,691 full TEUs, which was a 5.7 percent year-over-year drop.

Although the 20,246 empty TEUs imported represented growth from September 2011 numbers, the increase was just 0.5 percent. The number of empty TEUs exported was also fairly flat; just over 30,100 empty containers were shipped out from Oakland last month, representing a year-over-year increase of 1.9 percent over September 2011. The volume does, however, continue a trend of monthly increases in the empty exports category dating back to April.

For the calendar year-to-date, Oakland has moved a grand total of 1.74 million TEUs, a decline of 0.4 percent from the same nine-month period in 2011, according to the data.