A requirement for federal workers and contractors to be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 — which would affect a number of transportation companies that work with the U.S. government — won’t exacerbate a backlog of shipping and deliveries, according to the Biden administration.
Shippers around the world are scrambling to keep up with surging freight costs, and the logistics organizations that support them are being challenged in unforeseen ways.
With shipping logjams slated to continue throughout the next six months, some are predicting what’s being called “a never-ending peak season” for all of 2022, in which there’s less supply than demand.
The U.S.’s biggest retail lobby asked Congress to pass a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package as well as update shipping and trucking laws to ease a supply chain crisis that’s raising prices and causing shortages.
Officials in Long Beach, California, relaxed restrictions on storing shipping containers in a bid to ease a bottleneck that’s left nearly 80 vessels waiting offshore to enter the biggest U.S. gateway for ocean freight.
Americans should buy their holiday gifts early this year, as the container glut plaguing ports and the supply chain will persist through at least year-end, the head of California’s Port of Long Beach said.
An executive order signed Wednesday asks state agencies to identify “priority freight routes,” and find sites that can be used for short-term storage of container cargo.