Supply chain woes creating crunch on land and at sea.

• Author: Knauss, Christina Lee

By Christina Lee Knauss

Images of packed container ships waiting for weeks to get into ports on the west coast have been in the news for the past few months, highlighting an issue that is reaching into nearly every industry and home in the U.S.: a massive supply chain crunch as the Christmas holiday nears.

A multitude of factors is causing the supply chain issues. U.S. consumers are buying goods at record levels, many of them produced overseas. The continuing pandemic has resulted in employee shortages and slowdowns at many overseas factories, creating longer wait times for shipments of everything from consumer goods to products needed by manufacturers, high tech industries and other sectors.

Finally, when the goods do get here, ports on the West Coast are backed up because of a shortage of longshoremen to unload the ships and an even more drastic shortage of available trucks and drivers to transport the shipments.

The East Coast, South Carolina included, isn't seeing the kind of backups being experienced at ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., but the effects are being felt here as well, according to those involved with shipping and transportation in the state.

Imports to the Port of Charleston were up 12% year-over-year in October as the port continues to take in more retail goods than ever before, according to Liz Crumley, manager of corporate communications for the South Carolina Ports Authority. Recent reports show that furniture imports into Charleston are up 55% year over year, and SC Ports has handled record cargo volumes both imports and exports combined for the past eight months.

Crumley said the dramatic increase in workload at the port hasn't caused any severe backups, largely because of a $2 billion investment in infrastructure in recent years that increased capacity. Some examples include modernization efforts to enable the Wando Welch Terminal to handle more cargo and bigger ships and the expansion of Inland Port Greer, which is served by rail.

Charleston also has the advantage of being the only port in the U.S. with new terminal capacity, added with the opening of phase one of the Leatherman Terminal in 2021. The expansion added more than 700,000 TEUs of capacity a measure of volume in units of 20-foot-long shipping containers as well as an additional berth that can accommodate mega container ships.

With forecasts showing that consumer demand is likely to remain strong for months, the Charleston port is likely to...