Shippers have started sending more freight to ports on the East Coast while the other side of the country navigates supply chain woes.

According to the latest data from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, there were an average 22 container ships waiting per day at the Ambrose Anchorage, which serves the NYC metropolitan area. Ships waited an average 5.25 days to actually dock.

In its latest market update, Flexport said "East Coast and Gulf congestion will continue through July, with vessels at anchor in New York, Norfolk, and Savannah; 36 ships at the end of June awaiting berths with wait times in the 7-10 day range."

"We are seeing more shifts coming over here," a spokesperson from Port Authority of New York and New Jersey told Yahoo Finance. "We are handling right now 33% more containers that we have when we were in pre-pandemic 2019 in the same period."

'Sending their goods to all four corners'

Port Authority saw an 11.5% growth in imports through May and estimated that 6.5% of it was originally intended to be shipped to the West Coast.

The change started during the pandemic after congestion at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach caused massive backups, pushing some retailers to use trade diversification.

"Retailers, they are basically sending their goods to all four corners of the United States instead of just all going to the West Coast... that's because of the supply chain issues that's been happening in the past two years," the Port Authority spokesperson said.

"They decided that they would rather just get it here [the East Coast] and then just truck it, or rail it to the final destination, wherever it may be and that could end up, will end up being faster and sometimes cheaper than just sending everything to the same port on the same coast," they added.

This is more expensive: It costs around $7,400 to transport 40-foot container from China to the West Coast while the cost of shipments to the East Coast are around $9,900, according to Freightos Baltic Index Data.