AS shipping delays and cargo continue to mount at Los Angeles County ports, local officials are tightening the rules on lingering containers around the docks, reports Yahoo Finance.
Starting this month, carriers will be charged US$100 per container, with the fee increasing by $100 per container per day.
The fee will not be assessed until November 15.
Collected fees will be reinvested by the ports to increase efficiency and address congestion.
"This is not intended as a pass-on cost, rather it's intended as 'let's move the cargo'," said Port of Long Beach executive director Mario Cordero.
The global supply chain crisis has made local ports make room for bottlenecked cargo.
"The terminals are running out of space. We need to make room in our terminals, approximately 530,000 container units are sitting on those waiting ships." said Mr Cordero.
Mr Cordero declared that 30 to 40 per cent of the cargo on the marine terminals have been there longer than nine days.
Meanwhile, the lack of shortage space for containers has fed a significant bottleneck at Southern California ports.
Truckers instead insist it's a function of the port crisis.
"They are on the streets because nobody is receiving," said truck driver Carlos Rameriz.
"Drivers don't care. They just drop it on the street. There's a bunch of empty containers on Washington Street because the [ports] have no place to put them and they get ticket, after ticket, I don't know who pays for them." said Mr Rameriz.