ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø

While consumers can shop online and track packages from the minute they leave the distribution center to their front door, some of the country’s biggest importers can’t get the same precise information about their own imports.

LOS ANGELES — It has been a wild year for the people who choreograph the flow of goods in and out of U.S. ports.

Stronger import shipments through Southern California ports last month produced an overall 6% increase in cargo volume, including the busiest May ever for container shipments at the Port of Los Angeles.

On one end of a dock at America’s busiest port, tractor-trailers haul containers through dense, stop-and-go traffic. Sometimes they collide. Sometimes the drivers must wait, diesel engines idling, as piles are unstacked to find the specific container they need.

The Port of Los Angeles has failed to meet pollution-reduction requirements at another shipping terminal, city officials said Feb. 1, their second such admission in recent months.

Shortly after the Port of Los Angeles agreed to require air quality improvements at one of its busiest terminals seven years ago, top port officials privately began rolling back pollution-cutting measures they promised, government records obtained by The Los Angeles Times show.

Port congestion is hitting Inland truckers in California in the pocketbook, according to a new report.

Los Angeles, the nation’s largest port, reported that freight handled fell 1.5% last month, compared with 2014, as imports dipped slightly.

The Board of Harbor Commissioners at the Port of Los Angeles approved a $1 billion budget for fiscal year 2015-2016 for the period beginning July 1.

After years of ending the holiday shopping season with too much merchandise stacked in their warehouses, U.S. retailers face the opposite this year: They may not have enough.