Container shipping into the United States is up, and most of those containers enter the country not at ocean ports but by truck or rail from Canada and Mexico, according to federal statistics.
A new U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics report states that in 2005, almost 26 million containers entered the United States, up 37 percent from 2000. Of those containers, 15 million came from Canada and Mexico.
The United States ranks second only to China in world maritime container traffic. U.S. container trade in 2005 and 2006 was more than double the trade of a decade ago. Two-thirds of the containers are imported into the United States, one-third exported to other nations.
Since 1996, however, world container trade more than tripled, resulting in a decline in the U.S. share from 16 per cent to 11 percent.
The report also noted:
The full text of “America’s Container Ports: Delivering the Goods” is available as HTML or as a 20-page PDF document at www.bts.gov/publications/americas_container_ports/.
