Walmart will extend night-time working hours to help ease the supply chain and shipping crisis, the White House says

• Walmart has pledged to extend its night-time working hours to help ease supply chain woes.
• The extended hours will help move more cargo from shipping docks to free up capacity, the White House said.

Walmart plans to work extra hours overnight to ease supply chain issues, the White House said.

It's part of a commitment by large US companies to move more cargo off shipping docks, according to a press release published by the White House early Wednesday.

Extra hours at night could help Walmart increase its capacity by as much as 50% over the next few weeks, the White House said.

The news came ahead of a White House summit called by President Joe Biden, scheduled for Wednesday, to tackle the supply chain crisis.

The crisis shows no signs of easing, as ships remain stuck around ports and containers mount up on docks waiting to be taken to their next destination.

The White House also said Wednesday that the clogged-up Port of Los Angeles would shift to a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week service, a tactic that has already been taken up by the nearby Port of Long Beach to get cargo moving.

FedEx and UPS have also promised to add more hours to help move more containers from ports in the US, the White House said.

Home Depot and Target would shift more containers at night and in the week overall to de-jam overwhelmed ports, the White House said.

"The supply chain is essentially in the hands of the private sector so we need the private sector to step up to help solve these problems," senior officials from the White House said on a call with reporters on a call Tuesday evening, the Financial Times reported.

They continued, "UPS and FedEx alone combined shipped 40% of American packages by volume in 2020. By taking these steps they are saying to the rest of the supply chain: 'You need to move too. Let's step it up.'"