LA and Long Beach Drayage in 2026: What the Container Numbers Actually Mean for Your Freight

If you move containers out of Los Angeles or Long Beach, the second half of 2026 has felt tighter than the first. The port data explains why.

The volume is real

The Port of Los Angeles handled 1,002,734 TEUs in June 2026 — up 12.4% year over year and up 19.3% from May. July came in at 960,464 TEUs. Through July, the port had processed 6,083,066 TEUs for the calendar year, running 1.80% ahead of the same period last year.

Long Beach moved 779,331 TEUs in June, up 10.6% year over year. Nationally, U.S. containerized imports rose 8.2% year over year in June to 2.4 million TEUs.

Why that tightened drayage

Import volume alone does not squeeze drayage. What squeezed it was import volume arriving at the same time domestic intermodal demand posted strong double-digit growth in June — the same tractors and chassis pools serving both.

Taylor Harrington, director of North America intermodal at C.H. Robinson, put it plainly: "The drayage market is definitely tightening up over the last several weeks."

Project44 data showed average daily active import shipments up 13.2% in June and 19.7% in July. More containers active at once means more pressure on appointment windows, chassis availability, and driver hours — even when berth congestion looks fine.

What this means if you are shipping

Book earlier than you did in the first half of the year.

Same-week drayage was realistic in Q1. In a market with this much active volume, appointment availability is the constraint, not truck count.

Watch free time, not just rate.

Demurrage and per diem exposure grows fastest when volume is high and appointments are scarce. A slightly higher drayage rate that pulls the box before free time expires is almost always the cheaper move.

Have a transload option ready.

When the box needs to come off the port clock and the final destination is not ready to receive, transloading buys you time and protects the container.

How Honest Transportation approaches it

We run drayage and transload out of Ontario, California — inland of both ports, close to the Inland Empire warehouse belt. We are a family-owned carrier, not a load board middleman, which means when you call about a container you get someone who knows where it is.

If you have containers coming into LA or Long Beach this quarter and want to talk through timing, reach us at (866) 474-2232 or through the contact form on this site.

Sources

Port of Los Angeles container statistics, 2026. Transport Topics, "Drayage capacity tightens as import volume rises in June," August 6, 2026.