Mike Blake/Reuters
- The supply chain crisis is beginning to improve, according to the CEO of a global logistics firm.
- "We're through the worst of it. I think we've reached the peak," GXO's Malcolm Wilson told Bloomberg.
- Port delays have led to a massive backlog of ships, but Wilson says things are beginning to move.
A rare bright spot has emerged amid the seemingly endless supply-chain crisis: a leading contract logistics company is starting to see movement.
"We're through the worst of it. I think we've reached the peak," said Malcolm Wilson, the CEO of GXO, in an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday. "Hopefully, things will look a bit smoother as we move forward."
GXO, which has more than 860 warehouses around the world, is a downstream player from the ports that have seen a swelling backlog of ships waiting to offload shipping containers.
"A lot of that cargo, a lot of those products now are channeling into our warehouses," Wilson told analysts on the company's earnings call on Monday.
Many holiday shoppers appear to have followed advice to move their seasonal purchasing forward, which may be helping smooth out the demand on the system.
With consumer spending already at elevated levels, one truck driver described the situation at the ports to shopping on Black Friday with only one cash register open.
The congestion has left hundreds of truck drivers idling for hours on end waiting for cranes to load them with containers. Port workers at the major California ports told Insider's Grace Kay they've never seen anything like the near-record backlogs, and that the issues have spilled over to cities like Seattle and Houston.
Even though the worst of the crisis may soon be in the rearview, industry officials do not expect the backlog to fully clear until 2023.