Port of Los Angeles moves a record 1.04 million TEU in September

The Port of Los Angeles handled 1,042,652 TEU in September, the busiest month in its 118-year history. It announced the figure on 9 October. The previous record, from July 2025, was beaten by 22,815 TEU. On the day of the announcement, the port's own daily report showed thousands of rail containers that had waited nine days or more, which puts inland delivery dates at risk in the port's best month on record.

Start with what the 22,815 TEU is made of. A throughput record counts every box that crosses the quay, in either direction, loaded or empty. Against July 2025, loaded imports were 1,968 TEU higher and loaded exports were 4,244 TEU higher. Empties were 16,603 TEU higher. Nearly three quarters of the margin over the old record was empty containers. Empties came to 371,206 TEU in the month, more than a third of everything counted.

An empty is still a full crane lift, a slot in the stow and a place in the yard, so the work at the quay was real. The port's operations report for 9 October showed 16 container vessels at berth. Its line for vessels at 40 nautical miles, where ships hold for a berth, read zero. The quay kept up.

So where is the time going? The same report answers it. Boxes leaving by truck averaged 3.4 days on terminal. Boxes leaving by on-dock rail averaged 5.1 days. There were 18,327 import containers waiting for a train. Of those, 5,857 had been there nine days or more, which is nearly one in three. The day before it was 5,601.

The wait is concentrated. The port's rail report breaks it down by terminal and railroad. That morning one terminal, listed as FMS, held 3,845 of the nine-day boxes, about two thirds of the port's total. Nearly all of them were waiting for BNSF, one of the two big western US railroads. The report does not give the cause.

For a carrier's operations desk, that splits the exposure. Local cargo is moving at its usual pace. Inland cargo on a through bill of lading is the cargo that can miss its delivery date, and nothing in the monthly TEU release shows it. A port-performance dashboard fed from that release alone would have rated Los Angeles at its best in September.

October gives a test. The port's executive director expects about 900,000 TEU, roughly 140,000 below September. If the rail wait is a volume problem, it should shrink with the volume. If it does not, the constraint sits with the railroad, and the port cannot fix that alone. Watch the nine-day rail line in the port's daily report, terminal by terminal, against 5,857.