“Every sector of the supply chain has reached capacity,” Port of Long Beach Executive Director Mario Cordero said in a statement this week announcing that its terminals had their second-busiest October on record.

“We are trying to add capacity by searching for vacant land to store containers, expanding the hours of operation at terminals, and implementing a fee that will incentivize ocean carriers to pull their containers out of the port as soon as possible.”…

The bottlenecks at West Coast ports are tying up container capacity and underpinning already-soaring rates for transpacific ocean freight. That’s pinching margins for companies that import from Asia, like athletic goods giant Adidas AG, which said this week that its freight costs will be almost 200 million euros ($229 million) higher this year than initially planned.

Shipping a 40-foot container of goods from Shanghai to Los Angeles cost $9,947 this week, down from a record of $12,424 hit in September but still 145% higher than a year earlier, according to the latest Drewry World Container Index. Freightos, which measures container rates plus premiums and surcharges, shows a 40-foot box commanding $18,730, a nearly fivefold increase from a year ago.