September
2006
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas …
Traffic is up at nation’s seaports for a host of reasons but one, apparently, is because the Christmas holiday season is starting a couple of months earlier, at least for the Asian manufacturers, shipping lines and U.S. seaports.
That’s one of a number of responses to avoid strains on the system like those that surfaced during the 2004 holiday season, according to an article in dcvelocity. Others include longer hours, shifting to other seaports and improving turnaround times.
One way shippers have dealt with the threat of congestion is to begin bringing their imports into the country earlier in the season,” the publicaiton reported, based on comments from Paul Bingham, a principal at consulting firm Global Insight who specializes in global trade. That trend was reflected in the most recent Port Tracker report, which predicted that August volumes would match a typical October, normally the peak shipping month of the year.