New Cars Pile Up at Ports and Parking Lots Around the United States
December 9th, 2008The pace is quickening now.
Via: Reuters:
From pricey luxury sedans to popular hybrid cars, automobiles made overseas are stacking up at ports and parking lots around the United States as supplies far outstrip demand amid the nation’s worst auto market in more than 25 years.
At the Long Beach port near Los Angeles, Toyota Motor Corp vehicles including Prius hybrids, FJ Cruiser sport utility vehicles and Lexus IS 250 luxury sedans are being stored on a vast construction site that will one day be a new container terminal.
The site became a gigantic parking lot when Toyota and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz asked the port for space to store thousands of vehicles that dealerships have not been able to take on due to sluggish sales.
“It’s unusual that they would be here longer than a few days, but that’s the situation now,” said Art Wong, a spokesman for the Port of Long Beach. “They can’t move it through their pipeline fast enough so they are asking for additional space while they keep their vehicles here more than a few days, and in some cases more than a few weeks.”
The port has not counted how many additional cars were being stored, but Wong said Toyota has leased an additional 23 acres of space while Mercedes-Benz has leased about 20 more acres.
Nissan Motor Co Ltd, which brings its cars in through the neighboring Los Angeles port, had been talking to Long Beach about leasing space, Wong said, though that arrangement fell through.
A Port of Los Angeles spokeswoman, Theresa Adams-Lopez, said Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL), which operates the terminal that brings in Nissan’s vehicles, had shifted vehicle storage to another state.
Nissan spokeswoman Katherine Zachary said the company last increased its space at the Port of Los Angeles in February.
“As a normal course of business, we’ve got cars moving out of there all the time to various points across the country,” Zachary said in an e-mail.
WWL, which is based in Norway, would not comment on specific customers, but said auto inventories were building up across the United States.
“We are seeing cargo buildup at ports of entry on both coasts as well as at other inventory points such as factories and rail yards and dealerships,” Christopher Connor, the head of WWL’s business in the Americas, said in a statement.
Other ports are also seeing a buildup of cars, though not all of them are leasing large tracts of land to automakers. The San Diego port, which brings in Honda Motor Co, Volkswagen AG and Mitsubishi Corp vehicles, has about 14,000 cars on its property. That’s about 2,000 more vehicles than usual, according to spokesman John Gilmore, who said the additional cars belong to a range of manufacturers.
COLLAPSING DEMAND
Global automakers have been sideswiped by the collapsing demand for new cars and trucks. A market slowdown that began in the United States has spread to Europe and Asia.
Detroit’s embattled automakers have been pushed to the brink of failure by the downturn and are asking the U.S. Congress for a $34 billion rescue package.
As I stand here as a GM employee at a dealership, I am looking at ~800 new cars on our lot. What I dont understand is why as this situation grows, we keep getting truck loads of new cars. Our dealership is overflowing with SUVs and trucks we cant sale. Yet today we got 8 more Yukons. They are about to pave more room to park new cars. Very strange. Its almost like they are forcing cars to the dealerships because the distribution lots are full and they have to go somewhere.
I hope GM goes chapter 11 and has to fix the union situation that is plaguing this industry.
Those greedy bastards are keeping the company from making forward progress and raising the cost of cars.
Hopefully a opening at a Toyota or Honda dealership will open up so I can jump ship.