San Pedro Bay Dwell Times Spike as Vessel Calls Collapse Ahead of Lunar New Year

The Port of Los Angeles is experiencing a sharp congestion spike, with vessel dwell times rising 91% above the four-week rolling average, according to automatic identification system (AIS) analytics from WTCP Intelligence. The neighbouring Port of Long Beach recorded a 61% increase over the same period, putting the entire San Pedro Bay complex — North America’s busiest container gateway — under significant scheduling pressure.

The dwell time anomaly is not isolated to California. WTCP data identified elevated readings at four additional major container ports: Hong Kong (+44%), Tokyo (+38%), Rotterdam (+31%) and Tilbury (+30%). All six thresholds triggered when current dwell exceeded the four-week rolling average by more than 30%.

What the vessel call data shows

At the Port of Los Angeles, container vessel calls dropped sharply from 21 on February 12–13 to just two or three per day by February 15–16. The decline is striking: mid-week calls included a healthy mix of ultra-large container vessels (ULCVs), neo-panamax and post-panamax tonnage, whereas weekend arrivals were dominated by unclassified and feedermax vessels.

The pattern is consistent with scheduled vessels either waiting at anchor or diverting, while smaller opportunistic tonnage continues to call. At Long Beach, a similar tapering is visible — 17 calls on February 13 declined to five by February 16 — though the decline is less dramatic.

Rotterdam, by contrast, maintained high call volumes throughout the period, peaking at 270 container vessel calls on February 13 before dropping to 144 by February 16. Europe’s busiest port is handling significantly more feeder and short-sea traffic alongside deep-sea services, and its dwell time increase, while notable at 31%, sits below the severity thresholds seen in San Pedro Bay.

Context: Lunar New Year meets aggressive blanking

The timing is not coincidental. Lunar New Year began today, February 17, and the cargo dynamics around the holiday are well documented. Chinese factories and logistics operations wind down in the fortnight preceding the holiday, while carriers respond with blank sailings to manage the seasonal trough.

This year, the blanking programme has been exceptionally aggressive. Drewry’s cancelled sailings tracker recorded 136 blanked voyages for February across the transpacific, Asia-Europe and transatlantic trades — 122% more than in January. Over the five-week period from week 7 to week 11, some 125 blank sailings were announced out of roughly 710 scheduled departures, equivalent to 18% of planned capacity. The transpacific eastbound accounted for 63% of cancellations.

For San Pedro Bay, this creates a paradox that is visible in the data: fewer vessels are arriving, but those that do are experiencing significantly longer berth times. This suggests the congestion is not demand-driven — as it was during the 2021–22 crisis, when record import volumes overwhelmed terminal capacity. Instead, the current spike appears to reflect scheduling disruption. Blank sailings bunch surviving services together, terminals adjust labour and equipment allocation around reduced and irregular call patterns, and the resulting inefficiency pushes dwell times higher even as throughput falls.

The rate environment adds another layer

Freight rates offer no signal of demand pressure. The Drewry World Container Index (WCI) fell 1% to US$1,933 per forty-foot equivalent unit (FEU) in the week of February 12, marking the fifth consecutive weekly decline. Shanghai to Los Angeles rates eased 1% to US$2,214 per FEU, while Shanghai to Rotterdam fell 2% to US$2,127.

This matters because during the 2021–22 congestion crisis, freight rates and port dwell times moved in lockstep: rising demand pushed up both. Today’s data shows the opposite — dwell times spiking while rates soften — which points to a supply-side scheduling phenomenon rather than a cargo surge.

The broader rate trajectory reinforces this reading. The WCI composite has declined roughly 25% since its early January peak of approximately US$2,557. Carriers have struggled to arrest the slide despite record blank sailings, with Drewry noting that capacity adjustments are “not strong enough to outweigh soft demand.” Xeneta has warned that further aggressive blanking is likely as carriers refuse to watch rates erode.

Implications for terminal operators and importers

For terminal operations managers at San Pedro Bay, the immediate concern is labour and equipment scheduling. Irregular vessel arrival patterns caused by blank sailings make it harder to plan crane deployment, truck gate appointments and rail departures. When call volumes swing from 21 to two in the space of 48 hours, the operational disruption is considerable regardless of the headline dwell statistic.

For US importers, the signal is more nuanced. The congestion is unlikely to produce the cascading delays seen in 2021–22, because the underlying volume environment is demonstrably softer. The Port of Los Angeles processed 812,000 teu in January 2026, a 12% decline year on year. Loaded imports fell 13% to 421,594 teu and loaded exports dropped 8% to 104,297 teu. Executive director Gene Seroka attributed the decline partly to unfavourable comparisons with 2025, when importers were frontloading cargo ahead of tariffs, and partly to elevated inventories reflecting “a more cautious restocking pace.” The port handled 10.2m teu across 2025 — still among its highest years — but the January data signals the beginning of a volume correction.

The greater risk for importers is service reliability. With 63% of February blank sailings concentrated on transpacific eastbound services, shippers with fixed delivery windows face rollover risk, and the post–Lunar New Year recovery period — typically mid-March before normalisation — could see further schedule volatility as carriers recalibrate deployed capacity.

What to watch

The key indicator over the next two to three weeks will be whether dwell times at San Pedro Bay normalise as post–Lunar New Year cargo volumes begin to flow, or whether the pattern persists as carriers maintain capacity discipline to protect rates. If the Gemini Cooperation’s gradual return to Red Sea routing via the Suez Canal — which began this month with the ME11 service — is extended to the AE12 and AE15 services, the resulting capacity release could further complicate the supply-demand balance on east-west trades, potentially extending the soft rate environment and the scheduling disruptions that accompany it.

The simultaneous appearance of elevated dwell times across multiple regions — North America, East Asia and Northern Europe — suggests this is not a localised operational issue but a systemic consequence of how carriers are managing an overcapacity cycle through aggressive blank sailing programmes. For supply chain planners, the lesson is familiar but worth repeating: in a market characterised by excess capacity and carrier-driven scheduling volatility, schedule reliability rather than headline freight cost is the metric that matters most.

Data source: WTCP Intelligence AIS Analytics. Dwell times calculated from AIS vessel tracking data. Congestion alerts trigger when current dwell time exceeds the four-week rolling average by more than 30%. Freight rate data: Drewry World Container Index (February 12, 2026). Blank sailing data: Drewry Container Capacity Insight. Volume data: Port of Los Angeles (February 17, 2026).