Port of LA and Long Beach container volumes
Monthly TEU throughput for the San Pedro Bay ports, the demand signal that fills Inland Empire warehouses. Updated within days of each port's monthly release.
Container volume, San Pedro Bay
Monthly TEUs, both ports · Jul 2024 – Aug 2026The pull-forward ahead of the July 24 Section 301 duties was supposed to borrow from August. It mostly did not. Combined volume held at 1.88 million TEUs, up 0.8% year over year, with Long Beach loaded inbound up 3.6% and Los Angeles loaded imports at 500,302. Calendar year to date through August the two ports are running 13,717,051 TEUs, 1.4% ahead of the same period in 2025.
Los Angeles posted 1,042,652 TEUs for September, up 18.1% on September 2025, with loaded imports at 545,696. That takes its calendar year to 8,081,626 TEUs, 3.4% ahead of 2025. Long Beach has not published September, so the chart and the combined figures above stay through August and will be extended once it does.
West vs. East
September 2026 · Q3 asking rates| Metric | IE West | IE East |
|---|---|---|
| Base inventory | 374.5M SF | 326.1M SF |
| Availability | 11.99% | 13.53% |
| Vacancy | 4.82% | 6.47% |
| Net absorption YTD | +3,937,551 | −209,172 |
| Leasing activity YTD | 44.0M SF | 39.7M SF |
| Transactions | 486 | 299 |
| Under construction | 5.76M SF | 3.51M SF |
| Avg NNN, 100K+ (Q3) | $1.034 | $0.915 |
West closed the third quarter at 4.82% vacancy and 11.99% availability, with YTD absorption up to 3.94M SF. East cut its absorption deficit from 739,044 SF to 209,172 and brought vacancy to 6.47%, though availability is still 13.53%. East moved 39.7M SF across 299 transactions against West’s 44.0M across 486, so the average East deal is about 133,000 SF to West’s 91,000. On Q3 asking the West premium is 13%, down from 17% in Q2.
How to read these numbers
For occupancy planning- Loaded imports are the series that matters. Empties are roughly 37% of the combined count and are repositioning moves, not demand. A month where total TEUs rise on empties tells you nothing about warehouse absorption.
- Allow a lag. Containers discharged at the port take weeks to convert into pallet positions in Fontana, Redlands or Perris. Port strength shows up in leasing a quarter later, not the same month.
- Watch for pull-forward. When a tariff deadline is announced, importers accelerate. The spike is borrowed from the following months and reverses.
- Both ports move together but not identically. Long Beach and Los Angeles compete for the same services; a swing at one is often a share shift, not a demand change. Read the combined number first.