Traffic has finally resumed in the Suez Canal in Egypt after salvage crews freed a stranded container ship blocking it for nearly a week. It caused a major traffic jam, which could disrupt the supply chain for weeks to come, in turn making goods much more expensive to get to you, the consumer.

Data from shipping experts, Lloyd's List suggests nearly $10 billion worth of goods was disrupted each day.
This fiasco is making it much more expensive to move goods around the world and causing shortages of everything from exercise bikes to cheese.

“If your products were on those 300 ships that were stuck, you’ll feel somewhat of a delay,” Jim Berlin, the CEO of Logistics Plus said.

Even though the canal blockage happened over 5,000 miles away in Egypt, the affects can be felt in the United States and here in Erie.

Berlin said the supply chain could be backed up for months.

“Even though the ships will get through more quickly than they normally do and get rid of the backlog, when you think about it they all go into ports and ports will now be clogged and, so this will be ongoing and we will feel this for a few months I think,” Berlin said.

When traffic returns to normal, it will still take days to clear the backlog, further delaying goods on their way to customers. Berlin said customers have been spending more money lately so more goods are backed up.

“Business is booming, people have money in their pockets, the economy is coming back, and a lot of product is moving,” he said.

He said, however this is the perfect example of how difficult it is to manage a global supply chain.

“The things that can go wrong that you don’t expect to go wrong and how you react to that, so it’s a fragile system sometimes,” Berlin said.

He said it’s important to have a Plan B, which is what Logistics Plus is doing.

“When things go wrong you can’t control, you still have to communicate and keep in touch,” he said. “That’s all you can do, you can’t go there and shovel the sand any faster.”