Every few months a trade press headline cites a national import number and somebody in a Doral warehouse asks what it means for their next container. The honest answer: not much, on its own. The number that moves drayage planning in South Florida comes from two local capacity projects finishing in 2026 and 2027, not from a nationwide TEU count published by a retail trade group.
What Global Port Tracker Actually Measures
The National Retail Federation publishes a monthly report called Global Port Tracker, built by Hackett Associates, covering imports at a dozen major U.S. ports including PortMiami and Port Everglades. It's the source behind most of the "import surge" and "volume forecast" headlines that circulate in logistics trade press.
The report is useful and also easy to misread. It aggregates containerized import volume across Los Angeles/Long Beach, New York/New Jersey, Savannah, Houston, and every other port in the dataset, then breaks out a national total in TEU. Miami and Port Everglades are a small fraction of that total, both ranking well behind the West Coast giants and the New York/New Jersey complex in raw container count.
The National Numbers Behind the Headline
The current Global Port Tracker forecast puts full-year 2026 national import volume at roughly 25.8 million TEU, up about 1.4% from 2025's 25.4 million TEU. First-half 2026 came in near 12.7 million TEU, a modest gain driven by an extended peak season that pulled some import timing forward ahead of tariff deadlines. The report's own authors flag the forecast as uncertain, citing tariff policy shifts and a GDP growth rate propped up by AI infrastructure spending rather than broad consumer demand.
That 1.4% national growth figure is the number most trade publications lead with. It's also close to useless for a Miami drayage dispatcher trying to staff next quarter, because it blends a West Coast recovery, an East Coast all-water routing trend, and dozens of individual port-level stories into one flat line.
POMTOC's Yard Upgrade and the 40% Capacity Claim
PortMiami's cargo-side story for 2026-2027 isn't a volume forecast at all. It's a yard. POMTOC, the container terminal operator at PortMiami, has a cargo yard upgrade project scheduled for completion in late 2026, swapping in electrified rubber tire gantry cranes, new concrete runways, refrigerated container racks, and drainage and pavement repairs across the existing yard footprint.
The Florida Ports Council lists the project's stated benefit as a potential 40% increase in TEU stacking capacity within that same physical footprint, through denser, more efficient container stacking enabled by the new equipment and runway layout. That's a terminal-side number, and it matters more to a drayage dispatcher than the national Global Port Tracker figure, because it describes how many containers can physically move through the gate on a given day, not how many got imported nationwide last month.
- Electrified rubber tire gantries replacing diesel units in the upgraded sections
- New concrete runways supporting denser container stacking
- Refrigerated container racks added for reefer yard capacity
- Drainage and pavement repairs across the upgraded cargo yard
- Completion targeted for late 2026
Port Everglades' Berth Expansion and Channel Deepening
Port Everglades is running two separate capital projects that land in the same 2026-2027 window. The Port Everglades Navigation Improvements Project, led by the Army Corps of Engineers, deepens the outer entrance channel from 45 feet to 55 feet and the inner channel and main turning basin from 42 feet to 48 feet, with an additional foot of allowable overdepth. The project also widens the Intracoastal Waterway section near Berth 23-26, a known pinch point referred to locally as "the knuckle."
Separately, a $471 million berth expansion extends the port's turnaround area from 900 feet to 2,400 feet and adds crane rail infrastructure for three new super post-Panamax cranes capable of working vessels up to 22 containers wide. Together, these projects exist to let Port Everglades handle larger vessels that current channel depth can't safely accommodate at full draft, which is why a recent arrival of the largest cargo ship ever to call there came in lightly loaded rather than at capacity.
Why a National Number Doesn't Translate to Local Drayage Demand
A 1.4% national import gain can coexist with a much bigger local swing at either Miami port, in either direction, and the Global Port Tracker report doesn't resolve that for you. Three things decide actual drayage call volume at PortMiami or Port Everglades in a given month, and none of them is the national TEU total.
Vessel size matters first. A carrier swapping in a bigger ship on an existing weekly service doesn't change the schedule, but it can dump 20-30% more containers on a single vessel call, creating a short burst of gate demand that a monthly national average smooths out completely. Berth and channel capacity decide whether that bigger ship can even call at Everglades at full draft, which connects directly to the PENIP timeline above.
Alliance routing decisions matter second, and they shift faster than any capacity project. A single ocean alliance choosing to route more Latin America or Caribbean transshipment cargo through Miami instead of a competing Gulf or East Coast port changes local volume independent of anything in the national forecast. Terminal throughput capacity matters third, which is exactly what the POMTOC upgrade and the Everglades berth project are built to address.
What This Means for Drayage Capacity Planning
For an importer or a drayage company planning staffing and equipment into 2026 and 2027, the practical takeaway skips the national headline and goes straight to the two local projects. Late 2026 brings a POMTOC yard that can stack meaningfully more containers in the same space, which should ease some of the chassis and appointment bottlenecks that show up during peak season gate congestion. The Everglades channel and berth work runs on a longer timeline tied to federal appropriations and construction phasing, so expect gradual capacity gains there rather than a single cutover date.
Neither project guarantees smoother drayage. A 40% stacking capacity increase at a container yard doesn't automatically mean 40% more trucks get through the gate in the same window, if appointment systems, chassis availability, or labor staffing don't scale alongside the physical yard. One A Trucks tracks both projects' construction timelines directly with terminal contacts rather than relying on a press release completion date, because a "late 2026" target in a capital improvement plan and an actual operational go-live date are two different things in port construction.
Need a drayage partner that plans around real terminal capacity instead of a national headline number? Get a quote from One A Trucks. We watch the POMTOC and Port Everglades construction timelines as part of normal dispatch planning, not as a once-a-year news item.