The US Midwest is a major battleground for North American ports. This great concentration of population and commerce lies far from the nation’s coasts and represents a major opportunity for individual ports to gain market share versus their peers. 

The current perception is that there is an ongoing shift of cargo occurring from the West Coast to the East and Gulf coasts. The data says, however, that the actual recent volume changes in West Coast versus East Coast routings to and from the Midwest have been modest, at best. The big share shifts have, in fact, been between the West Coast port regions.

The accompanying table details the year-to-date Inland Point Intermodal (IPI) revenue movements of International Organization for Standardization (ISO) containers between coastal regions and the Midwest region, utilizing the Intermodal Association of North America ETSO data.*

Little year-on-year change

The total volume of ISO containers flowing intermodally between the coasts and the Midwest has changed little thus far this year versus last. Volume has edged up just 19,000 units, or about 1.1 percent The East and Gulf coasts accounted for about three-quarters of this increase, with the West Coast contributing the remaining amount. 

In other words, while the East and Gulf coasts did outgrow the West Coast, the difference was negligible — only 9,000 more revenue moves over five months. The market share numbers were, therefore, essentially unchanged from 2018 thus far in 2019. The West Coast accounted for 68 percent of the IPI moves to and from the Midwest through May, with the East and Gulf coasts contributing the remaining 32 percent.

In the East, ports in the Northeast have captured the lion’s share of Midwest volume this year. Its 90 percent share was essentially unchanged from 2018, dwarfing the volumes moving from the Southeast and South-Central regions.

East Coast-Midwest ISO containers not only include Asia-originating cargo, but volume from Europe and South America. If more Asia-originating cargo bound for the Midwest is moving via the East Coast, then for share to stay the same, Europe-originating cargo flows to the region must be diminishing.

There has been a lot of change on the West Coast so far this year, and it has all been at the expense of California ports. Volume between California and the Midwest has dropped by almost 9 percent YTD — a loss that has been more than offset by gains by Sea-Tac and Western Canada. California share has dropped by 6 percent YTD — a loss that has been neatly divvied up between the Northern competitors. Perceptions of port routing trends are often driven by the volume reports issued by Los Angeles and Long Beach. These reports are generally very timely and the first such data available each month. They also represent a huge chunk of import/export volume. But what happens in LA-Long Beach is not necessarily representative of the full picture.

While this data doesn’t allow us to break out volume between Northern and Southern California, based on the YTD import figures for the two port regions, it appears likely that most of the problem lies in LA-Long Beach. Their inbound loaded TEU was down 2.9 percent YTD through May, while Northern California inbound TEU was up 5.4 percent over the same period. One alternative explanation for the under-performance in Southern California-Midwest IPI volume would be increased use of transloading into domestic equipment. However, based on other data, this has not changed much thus far this year.

Each port region has a natural geographic “area of influence,” which typically consists of local population and industry. This volume is generally truck or short-haul intermodal and is not very susceptible to inter-port poaching. It is the long-haul volume such as that flowing towards the US interior that is the “jump ball” for which the ports are competing. 

Route choice depends on economics, service

The choice of route(s) to the interior are a function of both economics and service. Delivered costs to the Midwest are a function of ocean rates, rail rates, and port costs, (including the Harbor Maintenance Tax in the case of US versus Canadian ports). But I suspect that service is the bigger story. The pre-tariff surge caused a lot of congestion in Los Angeles and Long Beach and perhaps this West Coast share shift story is a simple one of importers moving to more smoothly operating options to the north.

It would not be surprising to see more changes in the months to come. LA-Long Beach operations are back to normal, so some volume might return there. IMO 2020 promises to raise ocean costs per mile and may well change the West Coast/East Coast calculation in favor of the West. On the other hand, trade war-related sourcing changes are moving the origin of quite a bit of volume out of China toward more westerly originations, such as Vietnam. These flows more logically will come to the US by sailing west through the Suez Canal and onto the US East Coast. How all these changes will balance out remains to be seen.

* The Southwest region includes the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland. The Northwest region includes the Northwest Alliance ports of Tacoma and Seattle, while Western Canada covers Vancouver and Prince Rupert. The Northeast region includes all the ports from Boston to Norfolk, with the Southeast region covering all the ports south from there to Miami and many Gulf Coast ports including the west coast of Florida, plus Mississippi and Alabama. The rest of the Gulf Coast ports in Louisiana and Texas are in the South-Central region. The Midwest region is comprised of nine states: Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas. It includes major intermodal hub cities such as Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Columbus

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