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Asia to US East Coast vs West Coast Shipping in 2026
Last verified: 11 September 2026.
Reviewed by: Sartaj Beary, Shipthis
Last verified: 11 September 2026.
Reviewed by: Sartaj Beary, Shipthis
This Article Covers
The Asia to US East Coast vs West Coast shipping decision used to be mostly about geography: if the cargo was going east of the Mississippi, it went through Panama. In 2026 that default is worth re-testing on every booking, because the Panama Canal surcharges four carriers have now layered on apply to the East Coast routing and not to the West Coast one — which moves the breakeven, sometimes by more than a thousand dollars a box.
This guide gives you the arithmetic rather than a pros-and-cons list: what the current rate gap actually is, what the surcharge adds on top of it, and the specific number your West Coast inland quote has to beat. It also tells you plainly where the public data runs out, because two of the inputs you need are not published anywhere and have to come from your own carrier and rail quotes.
Start with the ocean leg alone, before any surcharge. Two major indices both show East Coast well above West Coast, though they disagree on the size of the gap:
Two things matter in that table beyond the headline numbers.
The indices disagree by about $500 per box. That is not an error in either — they sample different carriers, contract mixes and inclusion rules. If you are using an index to sanity-check a quote, use the same index consistently rather than whichever one supports the answer you want, and treat the gap between them as the honest margin of error on any index-based estimate.
The spread is narrowing, not widening. On Drewry’s numbers the East Coast premium has come down from about 37% in late August to 32% on 10 September, because West Coast rates have been rising faster while East Coast rates flattened. If you last ran this comparison in August, the case for the West Coast is slightly weaker now than it was then — which is exactly the kind of movement that makes a stale routing assumption expensive.
Also worth knowing: the 1 September general rate increases largely failed, delivering only about $300–500 per FEU. There are peak-season surcharges in the market for 20 September and 1 October, but the ones currently filed are on transatlantic trades, not the transpacific — don’t let a headline about a PSS move your transpacific math. Capacity is being actively managed on the lane: Drewry counted eight transpacific blank sailings for the week following 10 September, up from seven.
This is the part that has changed the calculation in 2026. Every Panama Canal surcharge in the market applies to canal routings — which means it hits the East Coast and Gulf option and leaves the West Coast option untouched.
As of 11 September 2026:
The ranges are not hedging for its own sake. Three of these four carriers quote “per TEU” without specifying in their own notices whether a 40ft container is charged once or twice, and that ambiguity doubles the number at stake. MSC’s rate from 12 September is the exception — it is explicitly per container, which removes the guesswork but also changes the basis mid-month. Get written confirmation of the basis from your rep before you build it into a comparison; this is covered in more depth in the full carrier fee comparison.
One development worth carrying into your reasoning: on 4 September the Panama Canal Authority postponed its planned reduction to 47.5 ft indefinitely, leaving the maximum authorised draft at 48.0 ft until further notice. The canal has now eased twice — first postponing that cut in August, then shelving it — and not one of these four carriers has reduced or withdrawn a surcharge in response. Treat the East Coast premium as structurally sticky rather than as something that unwinds when the canal recovers.
Here is the framework. The two sides are not symmetrical, and the asymmetry is where forwarders lose money.
Direct to East Coast:
Ocean freight (Asia–USEC) + Panama Canal surcharge + GRI / PSS / BAF as applicable + destination port charges + final delivery from the USEC port.
West Coast plus inland:
Ocean freight (Asia–USWC) + destination port charges + drayage from terminal + transload cost, if converting to 53ft domestic + rail linehaul to inland ramp + drayage from ramp to door.
Combining the two tables above gives the number that matters. Taking the ocean gap of roughly $1,900–$2,374 per 40ft, and adding a carrier surcharge of anywhere from $130 to $1,000, the total East Coast premium currently sits at roughly $2,000 to $3,400 per 40ft container, depending on which index you trust and which carrier you book.
That figure is your breakeven. If the full inland cost of the West Coast routing — dray, transload, rail and final delivery — comes in under it, the West Coast wins on cost. If it comes in over, the direct East Coast call remains correct despite the surcharge.
What we cannot give you is the other half of that equation, and it is worth being direct about why. There is no reliable public benchmark for what it costs to move a 40ft international container from Los Angeles to Chicago or the East Coast by rail.
International intermodal is contract-rated and confidential; the Cass intermodal price index has not published since 2020; the JOC Intermodal Savings Index measures percentage savings against truckload rather than dollars and sits behind a subscription; and the available per-mile indices track domestic 53ft moves, not international boxes. Any article quoting you a confident dollar-per-container rail figure for this lane is estimating.
Get the quote, put it against the $2,000–$3,400 breakeven, and you have a real answer rather than a plausible one.
One structural note that is safe to rely on: a 53ft domestic container holds roughly 20–30% more than a 40ft ocean box, which is the basis for three-into-two transload consolidation. Whether that consolidation saving exceeds the transload handling cost is, again, a quote question.
Port-to-port transit times are the most commonly published and least reliable numbers in this comparison. Carriers keep actual figures in their schedule tools rather than on public pages, and the ranges that circulate online usually conflate port-to-port with door-to-door. Pull the days from your carrier’s schedule for the specific service string you are booking, not from a general figure.
What is verifiable, and more useful than a nominal day count:
The practical implication: if the cargo is genuinely time-critical, the honest comparison is not nominal transit but reliable transit — and reliable transit is decided more by which carrier you book than by which coast you route through.
West Coast. Los Angeles and Long Beach are running at record volume. LA handled 955,907 TEU in August 2026, 6% above its five-year average for the month, with June to August its busiest three-month stretch on record at more than 2.9 million TEU. Long Beach moved 919,992 TEU in August — its busiest August ever and the fifth-strongest month in the port’s 115-year history — with imports up 3.6% and exports up 4% year on year.
East Coast and Gulf. Volumes are healthy rather than distressed: Savannah up 5.7% in July, Houston up 1% year to date, New York/New Jersey roughly flat across the first half with a strong June.
Labour risk is currently low on both coasts, which is not what most forwarders assume. The ILA’s contract covering East and Gulf coast ports runs to 30 September 2030, and the ILWU’s West Coast contract runs to 1 July 2028. Neither is in negotiation in 2026 or 2027. If you are still pricing a labour-disruption premium into one coast, the contract calendar no longer supports it. The live friction is narrower: an unresolved ILA dispute over semi-automated equipment at Virginia, dismissed on procedural grounds in February 2026 and refilable.
Rail service is mixed. BNSF and Union Pacific dwell times were improving into late August 2026, while CSX and Norfolk Southern were lengthening. Domestic intermodal volume grew 3.6% in the first quarter, and analysts have flagged Chicago, Memphis, Dallas–Fort Worth and Atlanta as plausible bottlenecks if growth continues — though no actual congestion event has materialised at those ramps as of mid-September.
Run the breakeven every time, but these are the situations where the West Coast routing tends to come out ahead in 2026:
Conversely, the direct East Coast routing still wins when the destination is genuinely East Coast metro, when you are booking a low-surcharge carrier like Hapag-Lloyd at $130 per TEU, or when adding drayage, transload and two rail handoffs introduces more failure points than the cost saving justifies. More handoffs means more places for the schedule to break, and that risk does not show up in a landed-cost spreadsheet.
1- Is it cheaper to ship from Asia to the US West Coast or East Coast in 2026?
The West Coast is cheaper on the ocean leg — roughly $1,900 to $2,374 per 40ft less as of early September 2026, depending on the index — and the Panama Canal surcharges add another $130 to $1,000 on top of that to the East Coast option only. Whether it is cheaper landed depends on your inland cost from the West Coast, which you have to quote, since there is no reliable public benchmark for international intermodal rail.
2- Do Panama Canal surcharges apply to West Coast shipments?
No. The 2026 Panama Canal surcharges from CMA CGM, MSC, Hapag-Lloyd and ONE apply to routings that transit the canal, which means East Coast and Gulf services. Asia to US West Coast services do not transit the canal and do not carry these fees — which is the single biggest change to this routing comparison in 2026.
3- Will the surcharges come down now that the canal has eased?
There is no sign of it so far. The Panama Canal Authority postponed its deeper draft cut in August and then shelved it indefinitely on 4 September, leaving the limit at 48.0 ft until further notice. As of 11 September none of the four carriers has reduced or withdrawn a Panama Canal surcharge in response. Plan on the premium persisting and treat any reduction as upside.
4- How much longer does the East Coast routing take?
Carriers do not publish reliable port-to-port figures, so pull the days from the specific service you are booking. More usefully: global schedule reliability was 56.4% in July 2026 with late vessels averaging 6.06 days behind schedule, so nominal transit differences of a few days sit inside the delay noise. Vessels routing via the Cape of Good Hope rather than Panama are adding roughly 10–14 days, though Suez has partially resumed and some carriers are using it again.
5- Which coast has more congestion risk right now?
Neither is severely congested. Both West Coast ports are running record volumes — LA had its busiest three-month stretch on record this summer and Long Beach its busiest August ever — while East Coast and Gulf volumes are healthy rather than distressed. The more useful risk question is landside capacity on the West Coast inland leg, since that is the part of the routing your breakeven depends on, and it is not well documented in public sources.
6- Should I factor a port strike risk into this decision?
Not in 2026 or 2027. The ILA contract covering East and Gulf coast ports runs through 30 September 2030 and the ILWU West Coast contract runs through 1 July 2028, so neither is in negotiation. A labour-risk premium applied to either coast is no longer supported by the contract calendar.
See also: Panama Canal Surcharges 2026: Full Carrier Guide, CMA CGM vs MSC vs Hapag-Lloyd: Panama Canal Fee Comparison, and 7 Costly Mistakes Forwarders Make During Surcharge Season.
