Tuesday, October 20, 2026
The news that moves freight
Ocean Oct 12, 2026 · 7 min read

Port of Los Angeles posts its busiest month ever

LA’s record September is the peak arriving late, not a new floor. The Port of Los Angeles handled 1,042,652 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) in September, its busiest month in 118 years, the port said on 9 October. Loaded imports rose 19% year on year. Our view: this is a delayed peak season, not a new baseline. Imports were flat in August. The NRF’s own trackers expect US imports to fall 1% in November, and its supply chain chief says “Most holiday merchandise has arrived.” For forwarders, October space is still tight, but it should ease within weeks. Our call: LA’s November total, due mid-December, comes in below 900,000 TEU.

LA’s record month is a late peak, and November will show it The Port of Los Angeles handled 1,042,652 TEU in September 2026. A TEU, or twenty-foot equivalent unit, is the standard way to count containers. A 40-foot box counts as two. The port announced the figure on 9 October and called it the busiest month in its 118-year history. It beat the previous record, set in July 2025, by more than 20,000 TEU.
That is a big number, and the port deserves credit for handling it. But our view is that forwarders should not read it as a new baseline. September looks like a peak season that arrived late and all at once. The national forecasts already point to a drop by November. Plan for the spike to pass.

What the port reported

The figures come from the port’s 9 October release. Loaded imports were 545,696 TEU, up 19% on September 2025. Loaded exports were 125,751 TEU, up 10%. Empty containers were about 371,206 TEU. The port says that is the highest monthly empties total in its history.
The run around September was strong too. July to September was the port’s busiest quarter on record, at nearly 3 million TEU. June to September was nearly 4 million TEU, the strongest four-month stretch it has recorded. Year to date, the port has handled nearly 8.1 million TEU, more than 3% ahead of the same nine months of 2025.
Executive Director Gene Seroka said: “September was a month for the record books, and it was part of an extraordinary run for the Port of Los Angeles.” He said: “Consumer demand remains resilient, importers are replenishing inventories”. He added that more cargo is being allocated to Los Angeles as shippers deal with problems on other trade routes. At the port’s monthly media briefing, he said tariffs are lower than earlier this year, giving importers more cost certainty, and pointed to problems on the Suez and Panama Canal routes, the port reported.
Mayor Karen Bass said “Los Angeles is strong because our Port is strong” and gave special recognition to the ILWU, the West Coast dockworkers’ union. Harvard Business School professor Willy Shih, also quoted in the release, said: “Companies are moving from purely optimizing for cost to optimizing for options.”

Why we read it as a late peak

Look at August. The port’s 9 September release put August at 955,907 TEU. Loaded imports were 500,302 TEU, “nearly even with last year.” Loaded exports fell 9% year on year.
So in one month, loaded imports went from flat year on year to up 19%. By our arithmetic, the port handled 86,745 more TEU in September than in August, and 45,394 more loaded import TEU. That is roughly a 9% month-on-month jump in imports.
Demand does not usually change that fast. Timing does. Seroka’s own explanation is about timing. Importers restocked once tariffs came down from earlier levels. Some cargo was moved to LA from routes via Suez or Panama. Both are real, but neither is a lasting rise in what American shoppers buy. They are cargo moving earlier, or moving through a different gate.
The national data says the same. The National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates publish the Global Port Tracker, a monthly forecast of US container imports. In its August edition, as reported by Eyecare Business on 11 August, the tracker expected September imports of 2.16 million TEU. By 8 October, the NRF had raised its September forecast to 2.28 million TEU, up 8.2% on last year. That is about 5.6% more than it expected two months earlier, by our arithmetic. The extra cargo came late.

What the forecasters see next

The same 8 October NRF report forecasts 2.25 million TEU for October, up 8.5% year on year. Then it drops. November is forecast at 2.00 million TEU, down 1%. December is 2.02 million TEU, up just 0.6%. January 2027 is forecast at 2.07 million TEU, down 1.9%.
Jonathan Gold, the NRF’s vice president for supply chain and customs policy, said: “Most holiday merchandise has arrived.” Ben Hackett, founder of Hackett Associates, said: “Core economic indicators are broadly flat or weakening slightly month over month recently.”
The NRF headline itself is “Import Cargo’s Extended Peak Season Wrapping Up”. It expects 25.8 million TEU of US imports for all of 2026, up only 1.4%. That is a flat year with a late bulge, not a boom.
Seroka did not give a numeric forecast. In the release, his stated goal is to “finish the year strong.” In early September he said: “We’ve got good momentum heading into the final months of the year.” That momentum was real. Our view is that most of it has now been used up.
It is worth remembering how the summer forecasts went. In August the NRF tracker expected US imports to fall 7.6% year on year in July and 4.2% in August, according to Eyecare Business. The actual August figure was down only 0.7%, the NRF reported in October. Forecasters have been too gloomy for most of 2026. That is a fair warning against our own call. But even the NRF’s upgraded numbers still show November below last year. When the people who were too cautious all summer still expect a dip, the dip is likely.
There is one more reason for care. In August, the port said its volume was 6% above the five-year average for the month. September’s record sits on top of a summer that was already strong. The quarter, not the month, is the better guide to where demand really stands.

The empties are the signal to watch

The record in empties may matter more to forwarders than the headline. About 371,206 empty TEU moved through LA in September. That is about 36% of all the port’s volume, by our arithmetic.
For every loaded export box, the port handled about 4.3 loaded import boxes. Most of the containers that arrive full go back to Asia empty. When carriers push empties out this hard, it usually means they want equipment back in Asia quickly to load more cargo there.
The rest of San Pedro Bay was running hot too. Neighbouring Long Beach reported its best August on record, at 919,992 TEU, up 2% year on year, according to Cyprus Shipping News on 15 September. Its empties that month were 364,138 TEU.
There are two practical effects. First, US exporters may find fewer spare containers inland while carriers are sending boxes back across the Pacific. Second, once the import wave passes, carriers will have more empty equipment sitting in Asia and fewer US-bound bookings to fill it. That tends to push transpacific spot rates down. This is our reading, not a forecast from the port.

What it means for forwarders and shippers

In the short term, LA is still busy. The NRF expects October imports to be higher than a year earlier. Forwarders with cargo landing in the next few weeks should still expect full terminals and keep an eye on appointment slots and rail moves out of the port.
After that, the balance shifts toward shippers. If November imports fall as the NRF forecasts, carriers on the transpacific will have more space than cargo. That is a good moment for importers to push for better rates on early 2027 contracts and for forwarders to test the spot market.
Exporters should move the other way. Book equipment early while carriers are still focused on repositioning empties. LA’s loaded exports were up 10% in September, so demand for export boxes is there.
There is also a longer lesson in Shih’s comment. If companies are “optimizing for options,” as he put it, they will keep spreading cargo across ports and routes. LA gained from Suez and Panama problems this time. It could lose that cargo just as fast when those routes settle. Forwarders who can quote more than one gateway will be better placed.

Our call

Our prediction is that LA’s November 2026 total, due in mid-December, comes in below 900,000 TEU. We also expect November loaded imports at LA to be flat or down year on year, in line with the NRF’s national forecast of a 1% fall. If November instead stays above 1 million TEU, we are wrong, and the late peak is a lasting shift after all.

Sources