Why Deliveries Are So Slow (theatlantic.com) 84
Americans are habitually unattuned to the massive and profoundly human apparatus that brings us basically everything in our lives. Much of the country's pandemic response has treated us as somehow separate from the rest of the world and the challenges it endures, but unpredictably empty shelves, rising prices, and long waits are just more proof of how foolish that belief has always been. The Atlantic: When I called up Dan Hearsch, a managing director at the consulting firm AlixPartners who specializes in supply-chain management, I described the current state of the industry to him as a little wonky. He laughed. "'A little wonky' is one way to say it," he said. "'Everything's broken' is another way." Hearsch told me about a friend whose company imports consumer goods -- stuff that's normally available in abundance at any Walmart or Target -- from China. Before the pandemic, according to the friend, shipping a container of that merchandise to the U.S. would have cost the company $2,000 to $5,000. Recently, though, the number is more like $30,000, at least for anything shipped on a predictable timeline. You can get it down to $20,000 if you're willing to deal with the possibility of your stuff arriving in a few months, or whenever space on a ship eventually opens up that's not already accounted for by companies willing to pay more.
Such severe price hikes aren't supposed to happen. Wealthy Western countries offloaded much of their manufacturing to Asia and Latin America precisely because container shipping has made moving goods between hemispheres so inexpensive. When that math tips into unprofitability, either companies stop shipping goods and wait for better rates, or they start charging you a lot more for the things they ship. Both options constrain supply further and raise prices on what's available. "You look at the price of cars, you look at the price of food -- the price of practically anything is up significantly from one year ago, from two years ago," Hearsch told me. "The differences are really, really quite shocking." The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that as of July, consumer prices had grown almost 5 percent since before the pandemic, with some types of goods showing much larger increases.
Overseas shipping is currently slow and expensive for lots of very complicated reasons and one big, important, relatively uncomplicated one: The countries trying to meet the huge demands of wealthy markets such as the United States are also trying to prevent mass-casualty events. Infection-prevention measures have recently closed high-volume shipping ports in China, the country that supplies the largest share of goods imported to the United States. In Vietnam and Malaysia, where workers churn out products as varied as a third of all shoes imported to the U.S. and chip components that are crucial to auto manufacturing, controlling the far more transmissible [...] Domestically, things aren't a whole lot better. Offshoring has systematically decimated America's capacity to manufacture most things at home, and even products that are made in the United States likely use at least some raw materials or components that need to be imported or are in short supply for other reasons.
Such severe price hikes aren't supposed to happen. Wealthy Western countries offloaded much of their manufacturing to Asia and Latin America precisely because container shipping has made moving goods between hemispheres so inexpensive. When that math tips into unprofitability, either companies stop shipping goods and wait for better rates, or they start charging you a lot more for the things they ship. Both options constrain supply further and raise prices on what's available. "You look at the price of cars, you look at the price of food -- the price of practically anything is up significantly from one year ago, from two years ago," Hearsch told me. "The differences are really, really quite shocking." The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that as of July, consumer prices had grown almost 5 percent since before the pandemic, with some types of goods showing much larger increases.
Overseas shipping is currently slow and expensive for lots of very complicated reasons and one big, important, relatively uncomplicated one: The countries trying to meet the huge demands of wealthy markets such as the United States are also trying to prevent mass-casualty events. Infection-prevention measures have recently closed high-volume shipping ports in China, the country that supplies the largest share of goods imported to the United States. In Vietnam and Malaysia, where workers churn out products as varied as a third of all shoes imported to the U.S. and chip components that are crucial to auto manufacturing, controlling the far more transmissible [...] Domestically, things aren't a whole lot better. Offshoring has systematically decimated America's capacity to manufacture most things at home, and even products that are made in the United States likely use at least some raw materials or components that need to be imported or are in short supply for other reasons.
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OK, fuck the EPA. Drink my piss, shit, and all the chemicals I decide to throw in your water supply. Also, breathe whatever shit I want to put in the air. How about instead, "Fuck You" and build the USA.
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take a look at all the container ships that are stuck waiting off the coast of California [zerohedge.com]. Clearly, goods are arriving, but then they're just sitting around in boats.
Interesting. What will be the second order effects from container ships getting so log-jammed?
If I was a container ship owner, would I want to let my ship get stuck again if I ever managed to get unloaded? These ships might be looking at other shipping routes into countries that won't leave the ships stuck waiting...
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True, but they can certainly choose who to accept as customers.
Re:F--- Joe Biden!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Go ahead and blame Biden if it makes you feel better but cargo ships have been stacking up in ports for well over a year now.
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A bureaucracy is an imaginary thing, it only exists on paper and in minds. To the extent to which it does exist, it is made up of humans. And those humans' first job is to perpetuate the bureaucracy which gives them power.
It's the politicians.
Re:fuck the EPA and build USA!! (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in a factory town. That factory is having a hard time getting employees to work for them. People just don't want to move to the town, why is that? well it is because the factory has polluted the drinking water supply so people don't want to live near a place where they cannot drink the water.
This is costing the factory a lot of money, also the community has diminished. If the EPA or some other regulatory agency got involved faster the town would be much stronger and so would be that factory.
A business is looking out for short term profits, this often creates poor long term planning, and sets up a long term much more disastrous problem. In which it will often fall onto the Tax Payers exponentially a lot more money to fix than it would had been to properly regulate and manage.
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I'm thinking a big part of the reason not to move to a factory town is just how many people have been left holding the bag when other factories have shut down and fucked the towns they were supporting. Living in a place where there's just one large employer is a precarious situation.
A Change is Gonna Come (Score:4, Insightful)
This gives financial motivation for the USA to fabricate more goods on-shore with robots. The Robots Are Coming, and price inflation for international shipping should accelerate that trend. Then, once the robots make robots cheaply enough, every country will use robots as the path to wealth.
That does leave one hard problem, though. If the robots make all the goods and a lot of the services, then what will the humans do to earn enough to buy those goods and services?
\_(^^)_/
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Yes, it might end up being cheaper in the long run to pay workers more here, and not have to transport things via slow boat from China.
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This can also lead to lower quality products, or higher cost products.
So lets say America makes the top quality steal. But also wants to product a product that doesn't need such high quality steel. So the product is going to be too expensive, because it cannot be produced with a cheaper alternative. Also in some countries the jobs that in the US we consider low end worthless jobs, are highly regarded in other countries, so where we would have a highschool dropout just handling the job in the US, in an ot
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Also in some countries the jobs that in the US we consider low end worthless jobs, are highly regarded in other countries, so where we would have a highschool dropout just handling the job in the US, in an other country you can have someone who wanted to do that job their whole life
Since the Pandemic, people can basically get $15/hr for breathing. So who's going to take a low end job if you can get paid to sit on your ass. Thus the labor shortage and rising prices. Business is competing with government for a limited labor pool. Business loses because government can print money.
It won't stop there. Feed a wild animal and it stops hunting. Pay people to do nothing and they stop working.
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I don’t think you understand how unemployment works or where the money comes from. The government isn’t just printing money and handing it out. Negotiating for higher wages seems pretty capitalist to me.
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It is. It's not very feudal though.
It's interesting: the black death killed so many people in Europe that it broke the feudal serfdom system in most places. COVID hasn't killed nearly that many, even in the US, yet it seems to be having some of the same effects.
Perhaps it's just employers learning that if you tell your employees to fuck off when things get a little tough, they might tell you right back when you try and rehire them all afterward.
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I donâ(TM)t think you understand how unemployment works or where the money comes from. The government isnâ(TM)t just printing money and handing it out.
No, it's going further into debt. And nobody really knows where the line is past which the system fails, either.
Negotiating for higher wages seems pretty capitalist to me.
Agreed.
Re:A Change is Gonna Come (Score:4)
No, they stop working shit jobs.
The problem is a lot of employers are dependent on people desperate to take any job that they'll take a shit job with shit pay and shit hours. And no, it's not unemployment making industries hard to hire, it's the shut hours and shit pay.
Would you work as a cook if the restaurant pays say, $25/hr? But what if it meant that you only worked say, 8 hours a week, 4 hours on Friday and 4 on Saturday, starting sometime between 4pm and 8pm? But oh, maybe they don't call you at all, so no 4 hours for you.
Oh sure, get another job? Sure, there are jobs that pay $20/hr, but they'll give you at least 20 hours. But oh, they want you to work Friday and Saturday nights too?
The businesses claiming they can't hire people are those kind of businesses - and it turns out, people left those jobs for far more stable jobs - they may pay even less money, say, $15/hr, but the hours are predictable and perhaps they get 40 hours a week, 9-5 type position.
The /. equivalent would be if an employer paid you 20% more money. But wants you into the office every day no remote work possible (doesn't matter if the job can be done remotely or not - the company doesn't allow work from home).
Money isn't everything. A lot of those people moved from industries where the work is unpredictable to industries where the employment is far more stable.
A lot of businesses laid off people - those people needed work, and while unemployment worked for abit, they found far more fulfilling work.
A lot of the pandemic is people reflecting on what work means, and making changes they always wanted to, but never had the will to do. Shittier jobs will have to find ways to make themselves less shitty.
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The Chinese are actually really good at manufacturing
The Chinese also have factories where the employees live in dorms, work 12 hours a day 6 days a week and don't make enough money to save enough to get an apartment. The employees are charged to live in the dorms but they don't have anywhere to cook so they must pay the factory to eat in the cafeteria or get food from outside and they are luck to have a lukewarm shower. What makes China an attractive manufacturing hub is the lack of labor, safety, and pollution laws along with corruption and low pay for work
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The US has warehouses where workers have to pee in bottles because they get penalized for taking breaks. You have people working 80 hours weeks with multiple jobs just to make ends meet.
There are some shitty working conditions in China, but there are also lots of well run factories with good conditions. You get what you pay for.
The situation in the US isn't because of unions, it's because of bad employers. The Japanese are notorious for not firing incompetents, instead they just put them in a job where they
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The situation is because of bad union leaders and stupid humans.
The Japanese are notorious for not firing incompetents, instead they just put them in a job where they can't do too much damage or stop giving them work. The reason they are so good at manufacturing is because they have the manufacturing process optimized to account for human limitations and offer a good working environment that is focused on quality and improvement, not punishing and firing those who don't meet silly metrics.
No, shithead, they are good at manufacturing because people take pride in their work a
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That has to be one of the best concession posts I've seen in a while.
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Someone really should learn better debate skills. Your point was lost the instant you went Ad Hominem and attacked the person, not the opinion. Please try again when your thoughts are more organized.
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Well, the ultra rich don't like to wipe their own asses, so there's always that. Hmm, are you good with your tongue? There may be some openings.
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Well, the ultra rich (ie, most Americans relative to the rest of the world) want their toilet paper delivered with a same day service.
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I don't give a fuck what you mislabel as ultra rich. We all know that comparing average Americans to "the rest of the world" is bullshit. And also not accurate. I'm talking about billionaires, not average Americans. And not millionaires, either. The fucking ultra rich. You know exactly who I mean, Bezos, Musk, the Koch brothers, The Wall family. Those assholes.
Re: A Change is Gonna Come (Score:1)
Took me 6 months just to get a little cobot
The robots were already coming (Score:2)
Also, it's entirely possible that rather than robots as a path to wealth they'll be a path to dystopia. The 1% won't need laborers anymore. Adam Smith envisioned capitalism would mean that the capitalists would live near enough to the rabble that they'd be affected by their
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Also, it's entirely possible that rather than robots as a path to wealth they'll be a path to dystopia. The 1% won't need laborers anymore.
That's not how this stuff works at all, although a lot of the rich will be dumb enough to believe it no doubt. But you still need laborers, and what's more, you need a sizable population in order to produce the people who invent the new gewgaws for the rich to spend the wealth we produced upon. Only a tiny percentage of the population is capable of creating something new and there's no guaranteed path to making interesting, capable people who can invent interesting things the robots are capable of producing
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what will the humans do to earn enough to buy those goods and services?
I guess "literally nothing" is the simultaneous hope and fear of Americans. There is a dream that one day science will create a utopian world of abundance for all - but on that day either someone will still have a job enabling them to buy that coveted Ferrari, which will leave a cohort of humans unable to earn enough to buy those goods and services, or nobody will have a job leaving us in a state of dreaded Communism. How will our Capitalist institutions cope with the coming robot revolution?
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Our Roomba regularly gets stuck below one of the wheeled chairs in our office. I'm not holding my breath for The Robots Are Coming :D
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If the robots make all the goods and a lot of the services, then what will the humans do to earn enough to buy those goods and services?
\_(^^)_/
You are basically asking what all the buggy whip craftsmen and footmen will be able to do for jobs.
"Social media specialist" is a real job. No, I'm serious. Since that's true, I no longer lack any faith in our ability to create jobs out of nothing, lol
Such severe price hikes are supposed to happen (Score:2)
>> Such severe price hikes aren't supposed to happen.
This is the basis of offer and demand, guys, especially with inelastic supply.
Such severe price hikes ARE supposed to happen.
They regulate the market., they stimulate healthy speculation.
Money quantity increased drastically, demand for goods, not so much, supply for goods even less.
What did you expect from from that situation ?
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what will the humans do to earn enough to buy those goods and services?
Same thing they did before when Chinese slaves were building it all.
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Re:No shit, lockdowntardz! (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems silly to have to point that out, but it's not in your post, so there you go.
After watching things whole thing unfold, I am more confounded than ever about irrational we are in valuing lfie. It's so easy for people to get more upset about 1 death than 600,000 deaths.
Vietnam did it (Score:3)
It does screw with capitalism though. A lot. The US ha
Re: Vietnam did it (Score:2)
That's nice. Does food grow on trees all by itself or does it require a whole army (hehe) showing up to work to grow it, harvest it, process it, distribute it, so that the military can show up with a truck full of food and play Santa Claus?
Medical services are 20% of the US economy. That's 20% who can't stay home. Agriculture, petrochemicals and transportation (so we can all eat), defense etc all add up to another 20 or 30%.
No shutdown was ever going to be anywhere near total.
You're missing the point (Score:2)
Re: You're missing the point (Score:2)
At no point can you continue to staff the hospitals, put food on the table, keep the lights on, or keep the military running without having *half* the people still "out on the streets." And if you value your children's education at the possible risk of your own health, as many people do, that percentage will be a bit higher still.
Half of exponential spread is still exponential spread. And data on the covid birthday effect implies that a good deal of it happens in private gatherings with friends and family.
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They made sure people had money for rent and the like.
The feds made money available for that, but did not make sure people had the money, as they left it up to the states to distribute it. The money the feds sent out directly wasn't enough for rent. And I must add, many people still haven't got that money, let alone any rental assistance. My lady had to call our congresscritter's office to get help with that, because the help line at the IRS literally hasn't gotten back to her after she filed all the paperwork. They said they couldn't verify her identity, she
No-days deliveries. (Score:2)
Will tomorrows question be, why are people so impatient?
Sometimes you get lucky (Score:2)
So I ordered a part from Beetstech (in California) on Tuesday. Selected the slowest shipping option, estimated delivery in 7 days. They shipped it yesterday. The package arrived on my doorstep in the Netherlands, today.
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I ordered a bunch of stuff from China a couple weeks ago. It normally takes a month to ship, cost a couple bucks. It was delivered today, two weeks ahead of schedule.
Wasn't there something about the port of Long Beach being kind of a shit show? Maybe this is an American problem.
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You're just getting products that are already made and already in a localized shipping warehouse. There's a very long pipeline behind it for all the parts and suppliers and manufacturers, etc. That's what this story is about - the deliveries that manufacturing depends upon, not same day delivery bullshit.
So Long Beach has a normal expected amount of cargo per day. That formula has been upended. The economy went down, cargo starting shipping less, less people needed to be hired at the ports, etc. Then su
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Come on, man. My post was only a few sentences long. The least you could do is read it.
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I order small bits and bobs from China periodically and the prices have gone up AND the shipping has gone up. Stuff that used to have free shipping now doesn't, most of what I'm buying has gone up 10% in the last year or so, and in some cases both changes apply to the same items.
Inflation (Score:3, Insightful)
This is patently false (Score:4, Insightful)
There's 3 factors:
1. Around a million folks have died (based on excess deaths from previous years). They're not in the workforce any more. Many were retired, but based on the % of folks who retire in America that still means around 600k-700k no longer in the job market.
2. Boomers retiring early because why risk your life for a job you don't need. Given how few Americans can afford to retire this probably isn't huge, but it's still an effect.
3. Women can't afford to work. Daycare for a toddler or younger right now can top $1200/mo. If your earning potential is $12/hr it doesn't make sense to work at that point. This has always been an issue but Americans are bad at math, so many were working for basically nothing. COVID made them figure it out. On top of this daycares pay an average of $12/hr while Target/Walmart are paying $15+. This is creating shortages because women can't afford to work at a daycare, they need that extra $3/hr just to pay for rent and food. Prices could be raised, but then you take more women out of the running for the job market. Childcare could be subsidized, but socialism.
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Plus a substantial number with long term or permanent disabilities. It adds up fast.
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Early in the pandemic they were throwing around numbers like five-to-ten times the number of dead were going to have severe long-term problems, but then it kinda... fell off the radar. But I think it's just far too early to know. I'm not certain much of the health care system even has the available bandwidth to do much more than keep people from dying or getting worse. And the way each variant seems to hit a younger demographic means that the long-term impact on wo
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Many European countries have quite generous unemployment benefits but still manage to have high levels of employment. Coincidentally they also tend to have good wages.
Also don't forget that 700,000 people died and data from other countries on Long COIVD suggests that several times that number are now too ill to work, so there has been a significant reduction in the amount of available labour.
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I've been doing this 30 years, AMA (Score:5, Informative)
I have been doing import logistics for a European firm as well as from Asia for more than 30 years.
We've been dealing with what is basically a transportation crisis since Nov 2020, it's nice that the news is starting to notice.
The ship getting stuck in the Suez canal makes a nice narrative point at which they started paying attention, but it barely even tickled the needle for most of our work (to be fair, my Euro colleagues DID probably see more of an impact, but even for them it was barely more than trivial).
Normally (say, back in the ancient normalcy of 2019) for US ports (which are nowhere near the efficiencies of Euro and China ports, mainly due to their adoption of automation resisted here), ships arrive, they berth, they 'work' the ship (unload destination containers and reload outbounds) 24-48 hours, and it's on its way. Those unloaded containers would usually be transferred from port to local delivery in a handful of days, or about the same time frame be rolling inland by rail.
Now, we're back up above 50 ships waiting in LA/LGB port. (This was the level last Dec-Feb...it dropped to the 30s by May? not because LA/LGB was getting their shit in order, but because people were finally routing around it.) That represents something like 600,000 truckloads of cargo...waiting. On top of that, we have weeks and weeks of containers sitting in massive stacks in the port - we have containers that have been sitting in Houston for 8 weeks - again, normally, they're outbound in a handful of DAYS.
In transit, carriers are cancelling ports, skipping ports, anything they can do in a mad scramble to try to clear backlogs and get empty containers where they need to be.
At the foreign origins, normally it would take 3-5 days to book an empty container to load - now it's 6-8 weeks. And then it's just as likely that the ocean carriers will say "we know you booked 30 containers for this week, you get 8".
So it's taking transit times normally 3-4-5 weeks Eu origin to US door, now upwards of 12-14 weeks in some cases.
Asia origin is even worse. As the OP said, China to USWC base port used to be 1200-1500. Now it's $18k-25k. AND THEN you have to get lucky and find a space on a ship. Some skanky forwarders are now soliciting "VIP" service payments to put you 'at the head of the list' when a container space is available...with the implication that other people, paying more, will go ahead of you. Yes, it's like a bouncer at a crappy club working the line for bribes.
And it's getting worse. We are just entering Christmas season, then Chinese NY with NO SIGN of a light at the end of the tunnel. As I understand one BCO buyer said 'prepare for a Christmas with no cheap gifts, no stocking stuffers. If I have to pay $20k to get a container here, and can only ship 1 out of the 10 I need, I'm not shipping flip flops or cheap-nothing toys'.
Ask me anything.
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Yes, and it is over 70 ships as of a few days ago with about 9 containers offloaded and waiting for trucks to clear them out of the port. They have about 9 containers for every available truck.
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Actually, I just heard in a CBS report that it's 16:1 in Los Angeles.
I'd guess higher in Houston. Drayage there has been a shitshow with not enough companies since years BEFORE Covid.
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These are the effects, but why are the ports so bogged down? I would think Covid wouldn't affect cranes and trains that much. Just curious, because everybody is talking about the situation but no explanation for what is causing it.
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Is it lack of trucks to remove the stock from the ports? Why is there shortage of trucks? Certainly truck driving is one activity less prone to Covid.
Re:I've been doing this 30 years, AMA (Score:4, Interesting)
There's also an effect that the supply chains have changed. For example, everyone working from home means less demand in cafeterias and restaurants for lunch or breakfast. This means demands for bulk items are dropping, not as much demand for the 50lb can of peanut butter, they all want the one pint jar of peanut butter instead. So certain items started running out at the grocery stores for awhile as the suppliers started adjusting to what the demand was for, and that doens't happen overnight, or in a week, or maybe even in a month. Then as people go back to the office the process will reverse, the restaurants will be out of the large bulk items and may send runners down to the grocery stores to grab stuff.
In some ways, we're doing a lot of shifting of gears without using a clutch.
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Sorry, I sort of dumped that into a larger reply to an earlier post: https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
The economics of why drayage drivers are fleeing that business are complicated, I only basically brush against the biggest parts.
Actually, truck driving has been severely impacted. Covid precautions really hurt driver turn-speed at every place, directly hurting their incomes in a business that's already not very well compensated. The what, year-long closure of restaurants all over the country (not to ment
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You could do four two-hours deliveries with 5 minutes of paperwork per delivery in a work day.
However, if the paperwork takes 30 minutes you can only fit three two-hours deliveries between two legally mandated (and very well enforced) rest times.
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So, you're an office worker.
Every day you meet your 5, or 100 colleagues.
If any of them gets COVID, you will work from home for a couple of weeks.
Meanwhile, a truck driver will:
- do your paperwork and load a container from port A
- drive to destination B, with mandatory stops at God-knows-where, eating at God-knows-where, using restrooms wherever you can find them open
- once at destination B, do your paperwork and unload a container
Your "bubble" (the people you are in contact with) is much larger, and is mad
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Re:I've been doing this 30 years, AMA (Score:5, Informative)
A collection of reasons. COVID absolutely triggered it, but it's been a collection of issues building over decades.
Where to start?
Ports routinely build/plan for growth in low-single-digits. As high-cost infrastructure, they can't do anything else. This year imports have exploded, LA/LGB (which is a bellwether, because it handles 40% of US imports, but the problem is everywhere) just posted an August +50% volume over last year. I believe every month since March? April? has posted record-ever increases. Is it because everyone's buying from online retailers? That I dunno. I saw an article last spring interviewing a CLE railyard manager; he said they normally get a couple of trains a day, with 40-75 containers for Cleveland region. They work the train, load the outbounds, and off it goes to Chicago. He said now he gets two trains a day with 250+ containers all for Cleveland. He doesn't have the manpower, the equipment, nor the acreage for that sort of volume. What does he do? His guys work overtime clearing the train and just shoving containers everywhere there's a spot, in time for the next one to come. All organization is gone.
Covid labor shortages in Chinese ports have caused a huge backlog. I saw a story that Yantian - just one port - couldn't handle more than 350,000 TEUs* of cargo in FOUR WEEKS from mid May to mid June.
*1 TEU is = 1x20' container; a 40' container, what people see as a 'truckload' = 2 TEU. So they couldn't handle 175000 truckloads in just 4 weeks. As a sense of scale, the large transPac container ships hold 20-23,000 TEUs. It's MOSTLY 40s, so really a 20,000 TEU ship probably has about 12000 actual containers aboard, roughly?
Beyond those exacerbating factors, it starts to get a bit into the weeds.
Carriers haven't invested heavily in new ships, as pricing for a decade or more has been so crappy that major ocean carriers have been averaging a -3% ROI for years and year. (How they do that and stay financially viable is a long story and complicated economics; suffice to say these are strategic assets, and money's not the only important thing. If COSCO (China's shipping co) wants to raise rates, that's going to raise prices for US consumers, and lower demand. If COSCO CEO is contemplating raising prices 5%, and Chairman Xi calls him on the phone to say if he does increase prices, China's unemployment will climb by 50 MILLION PEOPLE, so Xi would prefer prices stay low...what do you think he does?)
There's a gridlock effect, certainly. Where there's such a vast amount of congestion, it's getting in their own way.
US ports (particularly) and their inland rail connections have been woefully underinvested (what US infrastructure hasn't?) for 50 years. Except in this case labor unions are part of the fight, actively resisting automation common now in other industrialized countries. Is it the NIMBY cities who treat ports and supporting connections as eyesores or the NIMBY populations who fight every expansion in the courts for years?
Every container needs a chassis to sit on (that's the bit with wheels). US chassis pools (they have them in every port and rail ramp inland) are vastly underequipped; is it the carriers refusing to invest? Is it the carriers looking to penny-pinch who consolidated chassis pools into generalist entities? Is it the ports who refuse to manage these pools? Is it the longshore unions who greedily insist that they be the exclusive providers of legally-required maintenance on these chassis?
On top of all this, drivers are fleeing the drayage business. Trucking (ie what you see driving around delivering stuff) and Drayage (the trucks that specifically move containers) look identical to most people but they're totally different businesses. Trucking has been struggling with sub-replacement employment for more than ten years. Companies have been shuttering constantly; I recall one year 2012? when I saw that in a single quarter 3000 trucking companies closed. And that was something like the 15th straight quarter with those number
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Sir, you should write that up for the WSJ.
Re: I've been doing this 30 years, AMA (Score:2)
Thank you! (Score:5, Insightful)
I have been doing import logistics for a European firm as well as from Asia for more than 30 years. [...] Ask me anything.
I'm just posting to thank you for taking the time to explain all of this, and for offering to answer questions.
I know the current trend here is to grumble about the quality of Slashdot. However, it's exactly your kind of post that has kept me hooked here, year after year. It's really quite astonishing how many times a topic will arise, no matter how obscure, and somebody with tons of actual knowledge and experience (often more than in TFA) will appears and decide to share their considerable insights with the rest of us.
I don't have any questions for you, and you're already modded to 5 (rightly so!), but I wanted to let you know that your contributions are highly valued and greatly appreciated. Thank you again.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks. You're very welcome. I don't have much expertise at anything, but I've sat in this chair for a while.
TBH I felt I sounded a little 'venty'. I apologize for that, I too have few 'f's' left to give.
Sure, there's a frisson of satisfaction being able to display knowledge and expertise in a very narrow field arcane to most people. But I'll be honest: my last mid year review with the senior management above my head, I only-semi-jokingly asked him to please go ahead and fire me, so I could go be a park
Gee (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah, maybe they shouldn't have said it in one breath with things that Adolf Hitler and Rockefeller wanted too...
Data point (Score:2)
At today's freight rates you can pay for a twenty-five year old freighter in a couple of trips. One company snapped up a boat at a bargain basement price during the pandemic and managed to do it in one trip.
Nice disguised ad! (for AlixPartners) (Score:1)
And by "nice", I mean clumsy and obvious.