The sentence that appears most in emails from US buyers is “When will it arrive?” — and the worst thing an exporter can do is answer with a fixed date. Ocean transit is a range by nature: sailing schedules, routings, port rotations, transshipment, berth windows — every variable moves. This article lays the typical Taiwan-to-US transits out as a map, so you quote lead times with grounding and margin.
The Taiwan end: three ports, three roles
Kaohsiung is Taiwan’s deep-sea workhorse — the densest transpacific direct sailings and the widest choice. Keelung and Taipei Port run mostly intra-Asia and feeder services, so northern-Taiwan deep-sea cargo commonly moves two ways: trucked south to board a direct mother vessel at Kaohsiung, or feedered to a transshipment hub for connection. Both work, with different time structures — the first adds island trucking, the second adds hub dwell. “Ex-Keelung” and “ex-Kaohsiung” on the same quote sheet can land a week apart; ask which routing before comparing.
The map: typical port-to-port ranges
Direct-sailing baselines, floating with carrier schedules and rotations:
- Los Angeles / Long Beach: about 12–18 days. The transpacific trunk — densest sailings, steadiest times
- Oakland: about 15–21 days. Most rotations call LA/LB or the Pacific Northwest first, adding days
- Seattle / Tacoma: about 11–17 days. The great-circle route is shorter; some sailings beat LA
- New York / New Jersey: about 25–33 days. All-water via the Panama Canal — roughly double the West Coast
- Houston: about 28–38 days. Through the canal into the Gulf, often late in the rotation
Transshipment adds roughly 5–10 days on top, with hub dwell and connection space as the main variables — and rolled containers hit transshipped cargo more often in peak season.
Port-to-port is not door-to-door
The buyer’s “how many days” means to the door; the numbers above stop at the wharf. Add:
- Discharge and pickup: about 1–4 days by terminal congestion and appointment
- US customs: about 1–3 days clean; an exam turns the unit into weeks
- Inland delivery: 1–3 days by truck within the port’s hinterland; 5–10 more by rail intermodal to the Midwest or interior
Rule of thumb: West Coast door-to-door from about 3–4 weeks, East Coast and Gulf from 5–6 — the smooth version, before peak-season variables.
Peak season: the timetable’s biggest enemy
The Q3–Q4 rush stretches three queues at once: ships at anchor, containers at the yard, chassis inland. In the worst historical West Coast congestion, anchorage alone ate one to two weeks. Surcharge dynamics live in our peak-season article; the timing rule is single: quote peak-season lead times off the top of the range, then add a week. And LCL cargo adds a destination deconsolidation step — slower than FCL by days.
When the deadline is truly hard
If the low end of the range is still too slow, ocean may not be this shipment’s answer — the air and express trade-offs live in the decision matrix. The other road: pre-position inventory in a US warehouse and turn thirty-plus transpacific days into two or three domestic ones.
SKYCARGO INC works these lanes weekly. Tell us the origin port, destination and deadline and we will reply with current sailing options; rates on request. (Personal shipments: Shiptw.)
Transit times move with schedules, rotations, weather and congestion; carrier publications govern. Reference only.
