Surprisingly, traffic in October at United States-based retail container ports was down compared to the same timeframe last year for the third consecutive month, according to Logistics Management Magazine.

A major reason for the ongoing decline in container traffic growth is a weak overall economy, and the fact that retailers are carefully managing their inventories so they are not forced into unplanned discounts. With the current economic outlook on the grim side, it will be a while before any type of significant rebound occurs.

The next few months are expected to be quite slow for port container traffic as the combined impacts of weak economic growth and the traditional slow season are reflected in lower container volumes. Also with the weak economy, the slow season will like result in relatively flat import traffic compared with slow season last year.