Think of going to the port as going to WalMart on Black Friday, but imagine only ONE cashier for thousands of customers. Think about the lines. Except at a port, there are at least THREE lines to get a container in or out. The first line is the 'in' gate, where hundreds of trucks daily have to pass through 5–10 available gates. The second line is waiting to pick up your container. The third line is for waiting to get out. For each of these lines the wait time is a minimum of an hour, and I've waited up to 8 hours in the first line just to get into the port. Some ports are worse than others, but excessive wait times are not uncommon. It's a rare day when a driver gets in and out in under two hours. By 'rare day', I mean maybe a handful of times a year. Ports don't even begin to have enough workers to keep the ports fluid, and it doesn't matter where you are, coastal or inland port, union or non-union port, it's the same everywhere.