January 2026 Container Traffic at North American Ports
The West Coast Trade Report (WCTR) is a monthly publication of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association. The WCTR monitors container traffic through 25 North American seaports, twenty in the United States, two in Mexico, and three in Canada. The TEU tallies cited here are the actual statistics released by the ports themselves, not before the fact estimates based on proprietary models. Three important container ports, the Ports of Mobile, Wilmington (NC), and Wilmington (DE) do not make their TEU numbers public.
Analysts’ Forecasts for January TEU Tallies
On February 9, before any major U.S. port had posted container traffic figures for the year’s final month, the National Retail Federation’s Global Port Tracker issued its estimate that the thirteen U.S. ports it monitors would handle 2.11 million TEUs laden with goods from abroad in the month of January. That would represent a year-over-year decline of 5.2%. Meanwhile, the Descartes Systems Group estimated that 2,318,722 TEUs arrived at all U.S. ports in January, a 6.8% falloff from the previous January.
January 2026 TEU Tallies Ports Are Actually Reporting
Here are the January TEU trade statistics that ports have posted prior to our publication deadline.
The Port of Los Angeles started the year on a down note. Not only were the 421,594 laden inbound TEUs the port handled in January down by 12.9% from a year earlier, they were fewer than the 429,923 inbound loaded TEUs the port had handled in the first month of pre-pandemic 2019. Similarly, the 104,297 outbound laden TEUs shipped from the port this January were down by 7.9% year-over-year as well as 29.1% below the volume of January 2019. Total container traffic (loaded and empty boxes) in January amounted to 812,000 TEUs, down 4.7% from the volume handled seven years earlier in January 2019.
Top billing this month goes to the Port of Long Beach, which tallied a higher container volume in January (847,765 loaded and empty TEUs) than did its neighbor, the Port of Los Angeles, which handled 812,000 total TEUs. Inbound loads in the year’s inaugural month amounted to 409,818 TEUs, down 13.1% year-over-year but up 26.6% from the pre-pandemic January in 2019. The 99,478 laden outbound TEUs shipped from the San Pedro Bay port, while up 0.8% from a year earlier, were down by 15.2% from the same month in 2019. Total container traffic in January was up 29.0% from January 2019.
Together, the two Southern California maritime gateways handled 1,659,765 total TEUs in January, down by 11.6% from the previous year but up 9.9% from January 2019.
Oregon’s Port of Portland got off to a highly inauspicious start to the year. Its Oregon Container Terminal (formally Terminal 6) received just 2,84 TEUs in January, down 38.1% from a year earlier. Outbound traffic of 2,616 TEUs was off by 40.9%. Total container traffic in the first month of 2025 amounted to 5,480 TEUs, by far the fewest number of containers the Columbia River port had handled in any January since 2020.
Also sustaining year-over-year declines in container traffic to start the year were the Northwest Seaport Alliance Ports of Tacoma and Seattle. Import loads were down 16.0% year-over-year, dropping to 91,017 TEUs. That also represented a 29.2% plunge from January 2019. Export laden shipments edged lower by 0.3% to 48,160 TEUs but remained down 33.9% from the first month of 2019. Total YTD container moves through the Washington State maritime complex (including shipments involving Alaska and Hawaii) amounted to 228,166 TEUs, down 30.1% from the total number of containers the ports handled in January 2019.
Across the border in British Columbia, the Port of Vancouver reported 173,227 inbound loaded TEUs in January, up 1.7% from both the previous January and from January 2019. Outbound loads amounted to 57,754 TEUs, down 16.5% from a year earlier and off by 36.8% from January 2019, Total container traffic through Canada’s busiest seaport in January (316,797 TEUs) was up 1.0% from the first month of 2019.
The Port of Prince Rupert continued to operate in the shadow of its past. This January, the Canadian port located just south of Alaska’s panhandle, discharged 37,393 inbound loaded TEUs in January, a 4.6% year-over-year fall-off and a more substantial 31.4% decline from January 2019. Outbound loads (14,611 TEUs) were meanwhile down 4.0% from a year earlier and down 14.8% from the first month of 2019. Total YTD container traffic amounted to loaded and empty TEUs, 26.0% below the volume handled in January 2019.
Along the East Coast, Virginia’s Port of Norfolk handled 128,252 inbound laden TEUs to start the year, up 5.3% from a year earlier and 16.9% ahead of the count in January 2019. Outbound loads, meanwhile, amounted to 82,231 TEUs, off by 2.0% year-over-year but up 5.5% from six years earlier. Total container moves through the Mid-Atlantic this January amounted to 261,482 TEUs, up 8.9% from January 2019.
On the Gulf Coast, Port Houston discharged 177,856 laden TEUs in January, up 4.4% from the previous January and 86.6% higher than the port handled in January 2019. The 129,296 outbound loads the Texas port handled in January were up 5.2% from a year earlier and 47.0% higher than the volume handled in the first month of 2019. Total container traffic in January amounted to 370,034 TEUs, a 72.1% gain over January 2019’s volume.