True that. I ship from Orange County out of LA/LGB. One time I had a load going to Europe, but it was coming out of our supplier’s place in So. San Fran. I was shocked when the freight forwarder had it trucked down here, instead of going out of Oakland !
Yeah I don’t know why they don’t send those by train to an east coast port. Would seem on the surface to make more sense. I ship to Europe a few times a year, usually close to a full container. The customer chooses the freight forwarder and they always deliver it to LA/LB and sail around to deliver to Europe. There must be a reason for that, it is probably more efficient to load 10,000 containers on a ship than on the many trains.
I have a friend up in Montreal. He imports cheap finished goods from Asia and sells them to discount stores in Canada. He’s going broke with the container/shipping costs because his business is basically operating on a small margin but fairly large volume. But he’s paying more to get goods delivered than the goods inside the container cost.