Port of Long Beach set to handle record 10m teu this year
The Loadstar · Nov 5, 2026
The Californian port of Long Beach is predicted to handle more than 10m teu this year, for the first time. “It’s been a peak year,” Port of Long Beach CEO Noel Hacegaba told The Loadstar on the sidelines of the World Ports Conference in London this week. “This could well be the first 10m teu year for us.” His comments followed a record-breaking September, when throughput hit 997,177 teu, its busiest month ever, ...
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What this moves
Context or analysis — nothing has stopped moving.
No freight-market transmission has been identified for this story yet. It is listed for context.
The corridor
Ports of Los Angeles & Long Beach
Domestic corridorUS West CoastThe San Pedro Bay complex is the largest container gateway in the United States and the primary landing point for transpacific imports. What happens on these two adjacent terminals sets the tempo for US inland freight two to three weeks later.
- Import surges land as chassis and drayage shortages before they show as vessel queues — the constraint is usually on the landside, not the water.
- Transload volumes move onto Class I rail within days, so a West Coast surge becomes a Chicago intermodal problem shortly afterwards.
- Labour negotiations, terminal automation disputes and truck-appointment policy changes all move throughput without changing a single vessel schedule.
- When the Panama Canal restricts transits, discretionary cargo shifts here, which is the main way a Central American drought becomes a US domestic trucking story.
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