‘Like a freeway in traffic’: America’s busiest ports choked by a pandemic holiday

Climbing consumer sales, worker shortages and a slowdown of transportation hubs created a supply chain crisis, leading to container-clogged dockyards

The holiday season at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, America's busiest shipping complex, has always been hectic. But 2021 is a year unlike any other.

A pandemic-induced buying boom and supply chain crisis led to an unprecedented backlog of ships lingering offshore and towering stacks of colorful containers clogging the entirety of the dockyard. Inside the port, thousands of workers are laboring around the clock to unload these containers one by one, sending the televisions, bicycles, medical supplies and more that they contain out to trains and waiting truckers, whose rigs stretch into nearby residential neighborhoods. The goods eventually make their way to warehouses and stores and into the arms of eager consumers.