The Port of Vancouver, operated by the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, is Canada's largest port and the third largest in North America by tonnage. It handles roughly $290 billion in trade annually, connecting Canadian exporters and importers to more than 170 economies worldwide. Every container that moves through its terminals, every railcar that departs its intermodal yards, and every truck that queues at its gates feeds into a freight network that extends across British Columbia, through the Prairies, and south across the US border.
When the port runs smoothly, BC's inland freight network operates with reasonable predictability. When the port congests, the effects cascade outward like ripples from a stone dropped into still water. In early to mid 2025, the Port of Vancouver continues to face congestion challenges that are creating real operational consequences for inland carriers, warehouses, and cross-border shippers throughout the region. For carriers operating on BC freight corridors, understanding the mechanics of port congestion and its downstream effects is not optional. It is the operating environment.
Canada's Largest Port by the Numbers
The scale of the Port of Vancouver's operations is difficult to overstate. The port spans 16,000 hectares across the Metro Vancouver region, with 29 major terminals handling a diverse mix of cargo types: containers, bulk commodities (coal, potash, grain), break-bulk, automobiles, and liquid products. In a typical year, more than 3,500 vessel calls move approximately 145 to 150 million tonnes of cargo through the port.
On the container side, the port's major terminals, including Deltaport (operated by GCT Global Container Terminals), Vanterm (also GCT), and Centerm (operated by DP World), collectively handle more than 3.5 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) per year. The Trans-Pacific trade route is by far the highest-volume lane feeding Vancouver, with cargo originating primarily in China, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia. In 2025, volumes on Trans-Pacific lanes have been recovering after the significant disruptions caused by the 2024 Red Sea crisis, which rerouted some Asia-Europe traffic and created knock-on capacity constraints across Pacific shipping networks.
The port's position as a gateway is a strategic advantage for Canada but also a structural vulnerability. When anything disrupts the flow of goods through this single chokepoint, whether labour disputes, weather events, rail outages, or terminal inefficiency, the effects propagate rapidly through the entire western Canadian freight system.
What Is Driving the Congestion in 2025
Container Dwell Times
One of the most visible indicators of port congestion is container dwell time: the number of days a container sits at the terminal after being discharged from a vessel before it is picked up by truck or loaded onto rail. During normal operations, dwell times at Vancouver's container terminals average two to three days. During congestion periods in early 2025, dwell times at Deltaport and Vanterm have stretched to four to seven days on certain weeks, according to data tracked by the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority's supply chain visibility program.
Extended dwell times are both a symptom and a cause of congestion. When containers sit longer at terminals, yard capacity fills up. When yard capacity fills up, vessel discharge slows. When vessel discharge slows, ships wait at anchor. When ships wait at anchor, the next vessels in the rotation are delayed, and the congestion compounds. This cycle is difficult to break once it takes hold, and in 2025 it has been a recurring challenge rather than an isolated incident.
Terminal Efficiency and Labour
Terminal productivity, measured in crane moves per hour and truck turn times, has been a persistent area of concern at Vancouver's container terminals. The BC Trucking Association (BCTA) has repeatedly flagged truck turn times as an operational bottleneck that reduces drayage efficiency and increases costs for trucking companies serving the port. When a drayage driver spends four hours at a terminal that should take 90 minutes, that driver is effectively removed from the available capacity pool for the rest of their shift. Multiply that across hundreds of drayage trucks per day and the capacity loss is substantial.
Volume Recovery After 2024 Disruptions
The 2024 Red Sea crisis, during which Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb strait forced carriers to reroute Asia-Europe traffic around the Cape of Good Hope, had indirect but meaningful effects on Trans-Pacific trade flows. Some carriers adjusted vessel deployments to maintain Asia-Europe service levels, reducing available capacity on Trans-Pacific routes. As the Red Sea situation stabilized into late 2024 and vessel deployments normalized, pent-up demand and inventory restocking drove a volume surge into Vancouver through early 2025 that the port's infrastructure was not fully prepared to absorb efficiently.
"Port congestion is never just a port problem. Every day a container sits at Deltaport beyond its planned pickup window, a warehouse in Surrey loses a receiving slot, a truck sits idle, and a cross-border shipment misses its appointment at Pacific Highway."
The 2023 BC Port Strike and Its Lingering Effects
In July 2023, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 514 and the broader ILWU Canada struck for 13 days, shutting down operations at ports across British Columbia. The strike halted an estimated $10 billion in trade and created a backlog that took months to fully clear. For the Port of Vancouver specifically, the strike was the most significant operational disruption since the 2005 truckers' dispute, and its effects extended well beyond the 13-day work stoppage itself.
Shipper Confidence and Diversification
The longer-lasting impact of the 2023 strike has been on shipper confidence. Major importers and exporters who experienced the disruption began actively diversifying their port exposure, routing more cargo through Prince Rupert (where the CN-served Fairview Container Terminal offers an alternative Pacific gateway), through US West Coast ports (particularly Seattle, Tacoma, and Long Beach), and in some cases restructuring supply chains to reduce their dependence on any single gateway.
Transport Canada acknowledged this confidence challenge in subsequent policy discussions, and the federal government's decision to impose binding arbitration frameworks for future port labour disputes was directly informed by the 2023 experience. However, the diversification trend, once started, has created its own dynamics. Some shippers who moved volume to Prince Rupert or US ports have found those alternatives cost-competitive enough to retain on a permanent basis, reducing the potential volume growth that Vancouver might otherwise have captured.
Labour Relations in 2025
The collective agreement reached after the 2023 strike runs through 2027, providing a period of labour stability at BC ports. However, the memory of the disruption remains fresh in supply chain planning conversations, and many shippers continue to maintain backup routing plans as a precaution. This defensive posture, while rational for individual companies, adds complexity to the overall freight network and can contribute to suboptimal cargo flows that worsen congestion at alternative nodes.
Port Expansion Projects: Roberts Bank Terminal 2 and Centerm
Roberts Bank Terminal 2
The most significant infrastructure expansion at the Port of Vancouver is the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 (RBT2) project, a proposed new three-berth container terminal at Roberts Bank in Delta, BC. The project, which has been in planning and environmental review for more than a decade, would add an estimated 2.4 million TEUs of annual container capacity to the port, roughly a 50% increase over current levels.
In March 2023, the federal government approved the RBT2 project with conditions, following the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada's review. Construction timelines suggest the terminal will not be operational before the late 2020s at the earliest, meaning the capacity it would provide remains years away. In the interim, the port must manage growing volumes with its existing terminal footprint, a constraint that directly contributes to the congestion challenges visible in 2025.
Centerm Expansion
The Centerm expansion project, completed by DP World in 2023, increased that terminal's capacity from approximately 900,000 TEUs to 1.5 million TEUs annually. This expansion was a meaningful capacity addition and has helped absorb some of the volume growth at the port. However, the operational ramp-up of expanded Centerm capacity has been gradual, and the full throughput potential of the expansion has not yet been consistently realized during peak periods.
Together, these expansion projects represent the port authority's recognition that Vancouver's container capacity must grow to meet forecasted trade volumes. The challenge is timing: the capacity is needed now, but the infrastructure additions are either recently completed and still ramping up, or still years from operation.
How Port Congestion Ripples Into Inland Freight
Drayage Delays and FTL Cascading Effects
The most direct link between port congestion and inland freight disruption is through container drayage. Drayage carriers, the trucking companies that move containers between the port terminals and inland warehouses or transload facilities, are the first to feel the impact of extended dwell times and slow truck turns. When a drayage driver loses half a day to terminal delays, that container arrives at the warehouse later than planned. The warehouse receiving dock that was scheduled for that container is now either empty (wasting labour) or has been reassigned to another load, pushing the delayed container to a later slot.
For FTL (full truckload) carriers operating on BC corridors, this cascade matters even if they never touch a container directly. When warehouse receiving schedules are disrupted by late drayage arrivals, the outbound loads that depend on that inventory being received, processed, and ready for shipment are also delayed. A BC-based FTL carrier picking up a palletized load from a Surrey warehouse may find that the load is not ready because the raw materials or finished goods that were supposed to arrive by container two days ago are still sitting at Deltaport.
Warehouse Congestion in the Fraser Valley
The warehouse and distribution centre clusters in Surrey, Richmond, and Delta, the three municipalities that form the core of Metro Vancouver's logistics real estate market, are ground zero for port congestion spillover. These facilities receive the bulk of containerized imports from the port and prepare them for onward distribution across BC, into Alberta, and south to the US.
When port congestion delays container arrivals, warehouses face an uneven flow problem: periods of very low inbound volume followed by sudden surges as the backlog clears. This "lumpy" arrival pattern overwhelms receiving capacity during surge periods and creates detention issues for truckers. A driver arriving with a load during a surge period may wait two to four hours for a dock door, burning through hours of service (HOS) that could otherwise be used for productive driving. The BCTA has identified warehouse detention as one of the most significant hidden costs of port congestion for the BC trucking industry.
The Detention Cost Problem
Detention time, the period a truck and driver spend waiting at a facility beyond the agreed free time window, is a direct financial cost to carriers and an indirect cost to the entire supply chain. For a drayage or FTL carrier, every hour of detention represents not just the hourly cost of the driver's time but also the opportunity cost of the loads that truck could be moving. In a tight capacity market, detention effectively removes trucks from the available fleet, further tightening capacity and pushing up rates.
Transport Canada's National Supply Chain Task Force, which issued recommendations in 2022 following the supply chain disruptions of 2021, identified detention and demurrage transparency as a priority area. While progress has been made on reporting and data visibility, the structural problem remains: when the port congests, detention costs cascade through the system, and the trucking companies and their drivers bear a disproportionate share of the financial impact.
The Rail Bottleneck: CN, CP, and Capacity Constraints
The Port-to-Interior Rail Corridor
Approximately half of the containerized cargo moving through the Port of Vancouver departs by rail rather than truck, destined for distribution centres in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, and points between. CN Rail and CPKC (Canadian Pacific Kansas City) operate the two rail networks serving the port, and their capacity through the Fraser Valley and into the BC Interior is a critical constraint on the port's overall throughput.
The rail corridor from Vancouver to Kamloops, where CN and CP lines diverge toward their respective transcontinental routes, passes through some of the most geographically constrained terrain in North America. The Fraser Canyon section, shared in proximity by both railways and Highway 1, is vulnerable to weather events (landslides, avalanches, flooding) and offers limited options for capacity expansion due to terrain. The November 2021 atmospheric river events, which severed rail and highway connections between Vancouver and the BC Interior for weeks, demonstrated just how fragile this corridor can be.
Intermodal Capacity and Rail Service Reliability
Rail service reliability, measured by transit times, on-time performance, and the frequency of service disruptions, has been a persistent concern for shippers using Port of Vancouver intermodal services. Both CN and CPKC have invested in infrastructure improvements along their Vancouver-to-interior corridors, including siding extensions, signal upgrades, and yard expansions. However, these incremental improvements have not fully kept pace with volume growth, and during peak periods the rail system effectively becomes a bottleneck that limits how quickly containers can be cleared from port terminal yards.
When rail capacity tightens at the port, the effect on inland freight is twofold. First, containers that would normally leave by rail instead remain at the terminal longer, consuming yard space and contributing to the dwell time problem. Second, some shippers divert to truck drayage for movements that would normally go by rail, adding truck traffic to already congested regional highways and increasing demand for drayage capacity that was not planned for in the carrier's schedule.
Impact on Cross-Border Freight Lanes
Delayed Port Clearance, Delayed Cross-Border Shipments
For shippers whose supply chains flow through the Port of Vancouver and then south across the Canada-US border, port congestion creates a double delay problem. First, the goods are delayed at the port. Then, once cleared and either transloaded or moved as full containers to inland facilities, the cross-border shipment is behind schedule. Border crossings like Pacific Highway (Surrey/Blaine), Huntingdon/Sumas, and Aldergrove/Lynden operate on appointment systems and capacity windows that do not flex easily to accommodate late arrivals.
A cross-border FTL shipment that was scheduled to cross at Pacific Highway on Tuesday morning but is delayed to Wednesday afternoon because the container it depends on was stuck at Vanterm for an extra three days faces a different traffic pattern, potentially different customs processing times, and a cascading delay to the final delivery in Washington, Oregon, or California. For time-sensitive goods, perishables, or just-in-time manufacturing inputs, these delays carry real financial consequences.
The Competitive Pressure from US West Coast Ports
Port congestion at Vancouver strengthens the competitive position of US West Coast ports, particularly Seattle-Tacoma (operated by the Northwest Seaport Alliance) and the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Importers who can choose between routing cargo through Vancouver or through a US port increasingly use congestion data and reliability metrics as selection criteria. When Vancouver's performance degrades, volume shifts south, which reduces the Canadian port's revenue base and weakens the business case for the infrastructure investments needed to solve the congestion problem. This creates a negative feedback loop that the port authority and Transport Canada are actively working to break.
What Shippers Can Do to Protect Their Supply Chains
Port congestion is not something an individual shipper can solve, but there are concrete steps that reduce exposure to its effects and build resilience into supply chains that depend on the Port of Vancouver.
Build Buffer Time Into Port-Dependent Schedules
If your supply chain depends on containerized imports through Vancouver, build a minimum three to five day buffer into your planning timelines beyond the vessel's estimated arrival date. This accounts for potential dwell time extensions, drayage delays, and warehouse receiving backlogs. The cost of carrying slightly more safety stock is significantly less than the cost of a production shutdown or missed customer delivery caused by a port delay.
Diversify Gateway Exposure
Evaluate whether a portion of your volume can be routed through alternative gateways. Prince Rupert's Fairview Container Terminal offers competitive transit times to many inland Canadian destinations via CN Rail. US West Coast ports, while subject to their own congestion patterns, provide geographic diversification that reduces single-point-of-failure risk. Even maintaining a backup routing plan that can be activated during severe congestion periods provides valuable optionality.
Coordinate Closely With Your Inland Carrier
Your FTL carrier is a critical source of real-time intelligence on regional freight conditions. Carriers who operate daily in the Surrey, Delta, and Richmond warehouse district have ground-level visibility into congestion patterns, detention trends, and schedule disruptions that macro-level port data does not capture. Maintaining open communication with your carrier, sharing container arrival updates, and jointly planning for potential delays builds a more resilient freight operation than treating carrier coordination as a transactional afterthought.
Invest in Warehouse Appointment Discipline
If you operate or control warehouse receiving operations, strict appointment scheduling and adherence reduces detention for both drayage and FTL carriers. Warehouses that consistently respect appointment windows attract better carrier service because drivers and dispatchers know their time will not be wasted. This is a competitive advantage in a tight capacity market where carriers can choose which shippers to prioritize.
Monitor Port Authority Data and BCTA Advisories
The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority publishes container dwell time data and supply chain performance metrics through its supply chain visibility tools. The BC Trucking Association issues advisories on trucking conditions affecting port operations. Incorporating these data sources into your supply chain monitoring process provides early warning of congestion buildups that could affect your shipments.
How Keylink Transport Navigates Port-Driven Disruption
As a BC-based FTL carrier, Keylink Transport operates in the geographic centre of port congestion effects every day. Our trucks move freight through the Surrey, Delta, and Richmond warehouse corridors that are most directly affected by port delays, and our cross-border lanes to Washington, Oregon, and beyond are downstream of every disruption that originates at the port terminals.
This proximity to the problem is also a source of operational intelligence. Our dispatch team has developed deep familiarity with the patterns of port-driven congestion: which warehouses are most affected during surge periods, which corridors experience the heaviest traffic when drayage volumes spike, and which cross-border windows are most likely to be disrupted by upstream port delays. We use this knowledge to proactively adjust routing, scheduling, and customer communication when congestion indicators begin to build.
We do not control the port, the rail system, or the weather that occasionally disrupts both. What we control is how we respond to those conditions, and our commitment is to provide our shipper partners with honest, timely communication and adaptive service when conditions change. In a freight environment where port congestion can turn a routine pickup into a half-day delay, that responsiveness is the difference between a shipment that arrives on time and one that does not.
Keylink Transport operates daily in the corridors most affected by Port of Vancouver congestion. Our local expertise and proactive communication keep your freight moving when conditions get difficult.
Get a Quote From Keylink →The Bottom Line
The Port of Vancouver's congestion challenges in 2025 are not a temporary spike that will resolve on its own. They are the product of structural factors: a port infrastructure that has not yet caught up to trade volume growth, a rail corridor constrained by geography, a warehouse market absorbing uneven cargo flows, and a lingering confidence deficit left by the 2023 strike. The expansion projects underway, particularly Roberts Bank Terminal 2, will eventually add the capacity the port needs. But "eventually" does not help the shipper whose container is sitting at Deltaport today or the FTL carrier whose driver is burning through hours of service in a Surrey warehouse parking lot.
For BC-based shippers and carriers, port congestion is not a headline to read and move past. It is the operating environment. The businesses that build buffer time into their schedules, maintain diversified routing options, invest in carrier relationships, and monitor port conditions in real time will navigate this environment far better than those who assume the port will simply sort itself out. The ripple effect is real, and it reaches every inland freight lane in British Columbia.
