Port of Los Angeles — Monthly Loaded Container Exports

Methodology

Each value is the month's loaded exports as published by the port, in TEUs, with the port's two decimals. Empty export containers, which carriers send back to Asia to refill, are left out. A TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) is the standard measure of container volume; one 40-foot container is 2 TEUs. Loaded exports measure the port's outbound trade in goods such as farm products, scrap and paper. They grew from about 0.8 million TEUs a year in the late 1990s to a peak of 2.11 million in 2011; the highest month is November 2011 (195,878 TEUs). They fell to 1.18 million in 2021, when carriers favored returning empty containers quickly during the import surge, and were 1.43 million in 2025. The port's yearly tables split each month's TEUs into loaded imports, empty imports, loaded exports and empty exports, with import, export and grand totals. Every month from January 1995 is used, and its four parts are checked against the printed total. A few historical cells on the port's pages carry typos. Empty exports for September 1995 read "30,969,80" and are taken as 30,969.80, which matches the export subtotal. The November 2020 total reads "889.,748.15", so the four parts are checked against the import and export subtotals instead. In June 1997, April and November 2002, March 2005, December 2011 and November 2022 a subtotal or part is off by up to 50 TEUs, at most 0.01% of the month. The four parts are used as printed. Their sum matches the port's total-TEU series in every month except November 2002 (50 TEUs over) and March 2005 (0.3 TEUs over). The port can revise recent months.

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Source

Port of Los Angeles, Historical TEU Statistics (yearly tables, 1995–2026): https://www.portoflosangeles.org/business/statistics/container-statistics/historical-teu-statistics-2026 — figures as published on 14 October 2026.