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Atlantic and Pacific ports in November continued their record-setting pace as imports continue to flood into the country during the peak of the holiday shopping season.

The country's largest ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will postpone the start of a fee on ocean carriers that fail to clear containers off the docks, which was set to begin Nov 15.

Union Pacific Corp. has begun receiving trucks around-the-clock at its freight facility near the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, extending operating time by about 20 hours a week to help ease cargo congestion.

More than six months into the economic recovery, the nation’s ports on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts continue to see record or near-record cargo loads, and port officials and economists forecast the substantial numbers likely will continue well into 2022.

U.S. ports and their private sector partners have ramped up their investments in infrastructure improvements, which ultimately should help trucking companies get their drivers in and out of these complexes faster and more efficiently, industry experts said.

Turkey’s Yilport Holding AS is in advanced talks to buy a container terminal in Long Beach, Calif., a deal that would value the facility at close to $2 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The Port of Long Beach had its best first quarter, up 19.4% compared with the same period in 2017.

In another sign that the U.S. economy is doing well, officials at the Port of Los Angeles and the nearby Port of Long Beach, Calif., said February was a record month for shipping goods in and out of the biggest ports in the United States.

The average time to enter and exit the two largest containerports in the United States slowed one minute in January on a year-over-year basis, although the percentage of trips over two hours fell in the same period.

The Port of Long Beach recovered from a rocky 2016 with a record-setting year in 2017, moving 7.5 million industry-standard twenty-foot-equivalent units, the port’s leader announced at the State of the Port address Jan. 24.