Capacity Stays Tight as Drayage Shortage Meets Shifting Ports

Carriers are drawing a hard line on drayage this earnings season, not pursuing growth rather than paying up for scarce third-party capacity to move it. That same constraint is showing up almost everywhere else in the market. 

The government just revised its estimate of the transportation and warehousing workforce sharply upward, ocean rates on the trans-Pacific eased even as Asia-Europe capacity tightened, and the July Logistics Managers’ Index confirmed trucking capacity has now contracted for eight straight months. 

Half a world away, the Iran war reshaped the global port hierarchy, pushing Dubai’s Jebel Ali out of the world’s top 10 and lifting Chinese ports into six of the slots.

Carriers Limit Outsourcing Amid Shortage of Drayage Drivers

J.B. Hunt, Schneider, and Knight-Swift all flagged the same constraint on their second-quarter earnings calls: not enough drayage drivers to move intermodal freight between rail ramps and warehouses. Schneider said it “elected not to chase growth” rather than lean on costlier third-party drayage, while J.B. Hunt executives said their in-sourced fleet of company drivers and owned equipment is becoming a bigger advantage as the outside market tightens. 

Knight-Swift outsources only a low single-digit share of its drayage needs, insulating it from the shortage. Carriers pointed to new CDL testing requirements and funding fights over non-domiciled licenses as underlying causes, the same squeeze we tracked when trucking jobs stalled even as warehouse hiring rebounded earlier this summer.

BLS: More Transportation and Warehousing Workers Than Estimated

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ preliminary annual benchmark revision found the economy had 135,100 more transportation and warehousing jobs in March than its models had estimated, a nearly 2% adjustment and the second-largest revision of any industry category, according to FreightWaves. The finding runs counter to last year’s revision, which chief economist Aaron Terrazas called an early signal of a softening labor market. 

Terrazas described this year’s jump as an outlier, since carrier bankruptcies and capacity exits make it unlikely that trucking drove the gain, pointing instead to parcel delivery and taxi and limousine services. 

The full subsector breakdown will not be finalized until February 2027, but warehousing and storage remains the largest subsegment at 1.83 million jobs, with trucking second at 1.46 million.

Drewry Index Edges Lower on Decline in Trans-Pacific Rates

The Drewry World Container Index fell 1% this week to $4,473 per forty-foot container, with Drewry’s data showing Shanghai-New York down 2% to $9,333 and Shanghai-Los Angeles flat at $6,818. Asia-Europe lanes softened too, with Shanghai-Genoa down 2% and Shanghai-Rotterdam down 3%. 

Carriers trimmed trans-Pacific blank sailings to four from seven as more vessel capacity returns, while Asia-Europe blank sailings rose to four from two as congestion at Shanghai pushed vessel wait times to roughly 96 hours, up from 35. The Strait of Hormuz remains a wild card even as some carriers cautiously resume Suez transits. 

Shippers moving less-than-container-load freight are especially exposed to this kind of congestion, since consolidation delays compound quickly once dwell times start climbing.

Capacity Stays Tight as July LMI Holds Near Four-Year High

The July Logistics Managers’ Index registered 68.9, down from June’s 71.1 but still higher than every reading between 2023 and 2025, according to DAT’s dry van capacity report. 

The capacity subindex fell to 28.4, marking an eighth consecutive month of contraction, while tender lead times rose to 3.74 days, up 11% year over year. Respondents expect capacity to keep contracting over the next 12 months, forecasting a reading of just 40.4. 

Diesel has climbed 51 cents a gallon to $5.313 since Iran-related hostilities resumed in mid-July, nudging some freight toward intermodal, which DAT estimates runs about 30% cheaper. Dry van spot linehaul rates now average $2.28 a mile, up 40.5% year over year.

China Gains as Geopolitics Impacts Global Container Port Rankings

Ningbo-Zhoushan overtook Singapore as the world’s second-busiest container port in the first half of 2026, handling 22.9 million TEUs against Singapore’s 22.7 million, while Shanghai held the top spot. The sharpest reversal belonged to Dubai’s Jebel Ali, which dropped from 10th to 32nd as the Iran war and Strait of Hormuz disruptions cut its first-half volume by more than half, to just 374,000 TEUs in the second quarter alone. 

China now holds six of the top 10 spots worldwide, and the Los Angeles-Long Beach gateway held steady at ninth, the only non-Asian port in the top 10. Southeast Asian transshipment hubs picked up the volume Middle East ports lost, with Tanjung Pelepas up 14.5% and Singapore up 8.6%. 

As port rankings keep shifting, shippers are leaning harder on providers with a track record of hitting delivery dates regardless of gateway, a discipline OceanGuaranteed has built over two decades.

What This Week Means for Shippers

A common thread runs through all these updates: capacity is the scarce resource, whether it is drayage drivers, transportation and warehousing labor, or ocean and port infrastructure rerouting around geopolitical risk. APL Logistics’ intermodal transportation network is built to absorb constraints like the drayage shortage without asking shippers to chase down capacity themselves, while our distribution & fulfillment operations provide warehouse capacity that isn’t dependent on a single labor market. 

Shipping internationally means coordinating freight, customs, warehousing, and last-mile delivery, often with different providers who don’t communicate with each other. With operations in more than 60 countries and over 200 facilities, APL Logistics brings it all under one roof. This way, you won’t chase updates across four different vendors or find out about problems after the fact. Contact us today to get started.