Port Congestion Playbook: Keeping Freight Moving When Dwell Spikes

Pull up your container tracking. Count how many shipments haven’t moved in a week. Now multiply each stuck day by the fees, the missed delivery windows, and the warehouse crews waiting on cargo that isn’t coming.

That’s port congestion in 2026.

Savannah is holding imports for nearly 12 days. Vessels wait 60 to 70 hours for a berth. LA looks fine at 3.4 days until you find out rail containers sit on-dock for six. Long Beach swings between four and eight days. Antwerp yards run at 90% full. Rotterdam vessel queues stretch to 48 hours.

None of that is temporary. And fees like LA/LB’s $31.52 per TEU OffPeak 2.0 charge pile on with every extra move.

So what can you do about it? We built this playbook around four things you can do to combat port congestion: rerouting, appointment strategy, drayage readiness, and cargo prioritization.  

Reroute Before the Fees Stack Up

Most shippers treat rerouting like a panic button. The smart ones treat it like a thermostat. 

Set your triggers ahead of time: berth waits crossing 48 hours, yard utilization creeping past 85%, rail dwell quietly adding a week to your inland transit. When those numbers hit, you already know the play. Maybe you flip from local delivery to rail (or the other way around). Maybe you split volume across two gateways so one bad port week doesn’t wreck your whole month. The key is making the call before the fees pile up and your options shrink. 

Most importantly, don’t forget what breaks downstream when you reroute: customs entry timing, chassis availability at the new port, warehouse receiving capacity, and who pays for the change.

Treat Every Appointment Like a Scarce Resource

During congestion, the appointment is the freight. Miss it or fumble the execution, and your container sits for another cycle. 

Build a tight routine around three steps: book early based on vessel ETA confidence, preclear the container before your driver rolls (holds lifted, documents matched, payments handled), and execute with zero wasted motion at the gate. 

Be sure to also track KPIs internally, like fulfillment rate, your average turn time, and your no-show reasons. Fix the patterns, not the symptoms.

Get Drayage Ready or Watch Everything Stall

None of the above matters if your drayage operation can’t keep pace. Chassis access, TWIC-qualified drivers, terminal familiarity, flexible shift coverage: all of it needs a plan before the spike hits. 

Build a surge model that answers one question: what happens when you need 20% more capacity for two straight weeks? Know your backup carriers, your overflow yard options, and whether your warehouse can receive on nights and weekends.

Don’t ignore the governance angle, either. The Federal Maritime Commission has continued scrutiny around detention/demurrage practices, and equipment constraints are a recurring theme in shipper pain points.  

Move the Right Freight First

Every container feels urgent when dwell spikes. 

They’re not. 

Your team needs a simple scoring system that cuts through the noise: which customers have hard delivery windows, which production lines shut down without that cargo, how many free days remain before demurrage hits, and whether the container can flex to rail or transload. 

Run that score daily during a spike. Pair it with carrier D&D alerts that flag exposure 10 to 15 days out, and you stop reacting to charges after the fact. You start sequencing pickups with a clear head.

How Mallory Alexander Brings the Playbook Together

A rerouting plan, a drayage surge model, and a container scoring system are all great on paper. But port congestion punishes the handoffs between them. One team reroutes the vessel while another team misses the customs update, and before you know it, your “plan” is a container sitting on a chassis with nowhere to go. At Mallory Alexander, we connect forwarding, customs, drayage, warehousing, and visibility into one operation so the left hand always knows what the right hand is doing.

• Rerouting Control Tower: We build your contingency routes before congestion forces a panic decision. Ocean, air, intermodal, cost-to-serve tradeoffs: all mapped out. When a port’s congested, you call us, and we pull the trigger on a plan that already exists.
• Appointment and Release Orchestration: A booked appointment means nothing if your container is still on hold. We clear documents, resolve holds, and confirm customs release before your driver rolls so the pickup actually happens. We run all of that through a centralized SOP so every branch, every port, and every team member follows the same release routine instead of freelancing.
• Drayage and Warehousing Pressure Relief: Pulling a container out of a congested port only to have no warehouse ready to receive it just relocates the problem. We pair drayage execution with warehouse capacity so freight has somewhere to land, even when gate schedules fall apart.
• Visibility Through myMALLORY: myMALLORY, our supply chain visibility and management platform, puts real-time tracking, milestones, customs status, and container details in one place with proactive alerts. Your team stops chasing status emails and starts making decisions based on what’s real.
• D&D Cost Containment: We track free time, flag exposure early, and build dispute-ready documentation that holds up against FMC billing rules. You stop rubber-stamping invoices and start contesting charges that don’t stand up.

Your Freight Plan Is Only as Strong as Your Worst Port Week

Every shipper has a congestion horror story. Containers stuck for two weeks. Demurrage bills that made accounting call a meeting. A customer who stopped returning emails because their order was ten days late. Those weeks will happen again. Whether you eat the cost or stay ahead of it depends on one thing: did you have a plan before the port backed up, or did you start building one after?

Rerouting, appointments, drayage readiness, and cargo prioritization. None of those are revolutionary ideas. But running all four together, through one team, without gaps between your forwarder, your customs broker, your dray carrier, and your warehouse? That’s where most operations fall apart. That’s where we come in.

‍Contact Mallory Alexander today, and let’s pressure-test what you’re running.