We are currently suffering from a supply chain crisis. And yet we also have 40 or 50 container ships routinely anchored off the coast of Los Angeles waiting their turn to unload their cargo.
This doesn't compute. The supply chain is obviously trying to deliver lots of stuff to us—the sign of a booming economy—but the real problem is that our biggest port can't handle the load. Finally, though, we're doing something about it:
The Port of Los Angeles will begin operating around the clock as the White House pushes to clear supply chain bottlenecks threatening the holiday shopping season and slowing the country’s economic recovery from the global pandemic, senior Biden administration officials said.
....Under the plan, the Port of Los Angeles will nearly double the number of hours that cargo is moving off container ships and onto highways by having crews work through the night. Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union will fill the extra shifts, according to officials.
In addition, major shippers and retailers — including Walmart, FedEx, UPS, Samsung, Home Depot and Target — will ramp up their operations to clear cargo out of the ports, freeing up more space on the docks.
It's not clear to me why it took so long to do this, but good on Biden for putting some pressure on the port, the union, and the shippers. We can't very well spoil Christmas, can we?
The “supply chain” extends end-to-end, terminating at the merchant for supply of finished goods for sale, and at the final manufacturing or assembly site for supply of the product manufacturing process. Transport is a critical component of the supply chain.
By the way, it isn’t particularly the Port of LA. It’s a problem all over.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/10/12/business/news-business-stock-market/the-worlds-stuff-is-piling-up-at-ports-waiting-to-get-to-stores?referringSource=articleShare
Yes indeed.
I have seen various proposals to make this situation better. Activate the National Guard etc.......
First the # of drivers needed exceeds those in the NG
Second they need the tractors to pull the loads.
I have also seen recommendations of bigger units to haul more containers. Good grief. You MIGHT be able to bet two containers stacked on top of one another but for many highways the over passes are just too low for that.
And tandem rigs (those trucks with 2 trailers) are too long for most secondary highways. (turning is a real problem)
It's a real problem
Trains carry containers double stacked, which makes them 26 feet tall. A double stack on a truck trailer would be a couple of feet shorter than that, but highways are designed for vehicles with a maximum height of 14 feet, which means you can't double stack on trucks. The trailers on B trains are shorter than the trailers on standard 18 wheelers, which means that you can't get standard 40 foot containers on B trains.
When you need to move a lot of containers any distance over land, rail is the way to go. Trains these days are nearly three miles long, which is about 250 container cars. With two containers each, a max length train can carry almost 500 containers up to 54 feet long (54 ft. are the longest containers, because it's the longest container a semi can carry; 40 feet is the most common size). The arithmetic is one train per day equals one semi every 3 minutes.
I would have thought a port like Los Angeles would have been operating round the clock anyway.
cld, I guess it's a good thing they haven't been. It gives us a way to increase the through put at the port. Hopefully all ports will up their hours to cut through the backlog of ships waiting to off load their cargo.
Operating the port is only a part of the picture. Read the Times article. Then find the Times article from yesterday about the jam-up at Savannah. The principal problem is transport out of the port. There isn’t enough and it’s too slow, Unloading faster will simply create bigger piles ashore, unless and until the outbound transport problems are solved.
@Ken Rhodes
Damn HTML tags.
Don’t know about Savannah or LA, but the port of Seattle uses private nonunion truckers. Most of these are undercapitalized, many recent immigrants of Eastern European or African origin. Every time the diesel emissions are tightened the truckers have to get new trucks they can’t afford. The whole scheme smacks of exploitation by the port.
👍
I would guess, since the trucks take most of the cargo out of and around town, that the port transports operate so as to not mix it up with rush hours of traffic that fills the freeways mornings and evenings on weekdays..
@Bardi:
In Long Beach, what they do is make it so it's always rush hour on the 710 (Long Beach) freeway.
Soo, at a guess, increasing throughput will increase costs per unit, so the various parties involved have been reluctant to do that.
The delays already increased costs 20x.
Uh, this is just one port a very big one to be sure. There are issues with workers in unvaxxed countries and their ports, there are railway issues throughout the country as well.
How about also spearheading some sort of "Made in America" program as well? Or have we just given up entirely on any sort of meaningful manufacturing happening at home?
@haddockbranzini
Americans don't want to pay the prices for American-made goods.
American companies don’t want to invest in the automation and advanced manufacturing technologies that would make at least some products price-competitive. Not when they can arbitrage labor and environmental costs overseas.
Well, if more people would pay attention to the “Made in …” markings while shopping…
Existing restaurants, stores, warehouses, etc. all across the nation are having trouble finding enough workers... and now we're going to shift all manufacturing here too, in time for Christmas? And still pay the cheap prices we're used to paying? Sure, Jan.
If execs shared the wealth, it might be possible.
I can't imagine the shipping companies are having trouble hiring longshore(wo)men -- those people make crazy money. As others pointed out, the main issue seems to be a lack of truck drivers and freight train bottlenecks. I'm not sure this action will solve that problem anytime soon.
The trouble may be in training the longshoremen. It is no longer a strong back and stamina. Those cranes need operator training. And practice to go at speed.
Say, that's the Port of Long Beach in your photo. You can see some of the Port of LA off a bit to the right.
That's the new bridge in foreground, which replaced the Gerald Desmond Bridge, the arch of which you can see peeking out over the new bridge's deck.
Spoil christmas?
Now you have let the cat out of the bag. Strong monolog from Tuckems coming right up. Progressive plans to destroy the holidays. Oops I meant xmas
Yes I'm sure you're right. Dems ruined Christmas, and we're not even allowed to say Merry Christmas!
Back in the summer I saw mention of a shortage of shipping containers - due to problems getting empty containers back to China. They're sitting on ships jammed up waiting to be unloaded.
Port administration can take steps to get containers off ships, and empty containers back onto ships, faster. However, the port's administrators don't control the availability of trucks and trains to move the containers out of the port, or empties back in.
My understanding is that containers are piling up at ports all over the world because land transportation is not keeping up. It doesn't matter how much jawboning Biden does if the trucks are not there.
@lawnorder:
Sounds like a job for the National Guard. They have a lot of trucks, and they're not too busy right now. They could get all that stuff off the docks and get some selfies with exuberant kids receiving those Christmas toys they thought they weren't gonna get. A win for Christmas is a win for America!
...also, they work a lot cheaper than longshoremen and teamsters.
Are their trucks the correct sort of trucks?
They're designed to tow longer loads.
Considering how widely used containers are, I would be surprised if army (US or National Guard) units don't have a fair number of trucks specifically designed to move containers around.
"Sounds like a job for the National Guard.... they're not too busy right now." Until Fox News spots the next Central American caravan starts heading for our southern border.
Oh wait, did I spoil next election season's major plot twist?
We.
Must.
CONSUME!
…
One might have assumed that those nimble, creative, money-conscious for-profit businesses and corporations would have gotten all this figured and worked out as a matter of course, instead of sitting on their hands until A DEMOCRAT rode in to the rescue...
Capitalism can never fail, especially not its faith in just-in-time logistics. All hail the Free Market!
Is anyone depressed that Christmas, originally billed as the birthdate of America's Favorite (and semi-official) God and a deeply sacred holiday, is now regarded solely as a big business opportunity, the time to spend, spend, SPEND? That this holy day (at least, to lots of people) is apparently the primary driver of our economy? That everybody feels compelled to gift far too many people with far too much stuff, wanted or not, and preferrably the least affordable, so they have to spend a good part of the following year paying it off?
-- This PSA has been brought to you by E. Scrooge.
The way I figure it, the Christians pinched Saturnalia from the Romans, filed the serial numbers off, added a few pieces from various early European pagan solstice festivals, and called the resulting mishmash Christmas. We atheists, agnostics, etc. can take a page from the Christian book; we steal their holiday, file the religious bits off, and make it our own mid-winter festival of greed. We're doing the Christians one better though; we won't even bother to change the name.
The Germanic tribes called it the Yule celebration. You don't need to invent anything.
We have a port here in Wilmington NC. Small compared to LA, Charleston or Savannagh but a port none the less. Since MOST of our goods come from the Asian area AND bigger is cheaper when it comes to container ships it's more profitable to put big ports on the west coast rather than have ships sail to the east coast or have to down size them to fit in the Panama Canal.
I saw a help wanted ad recently that offered an $80,000 sign up bonus for a trucking company. It was spread over 2 years - $40K per year. Not a bad gig.
The logistical problem IS from the port to the store. There it faces labor shortages to get stuff from the back room to the store shelves.
But the main problem is getting the containers out of the ports.
It will be a weird Christmas, for sure
My guess with the extra man power, this backload will surprisingly come off faster than expected. The real scandal is why it happened in the first place.
For those keeping an open mind:
COVID - the herd immunity and natural immunity folks keep trying but keep failing:
Mass is reporting some rather disturbing news:
https://www.masslive.com/coronavirus/2021/10/percentage-of-breakthrough-covid-in-cases-in-massachusetts-grows-as-more-people-are-vaccinated-given-booster-shots.html
{snip}
The state reported 4,034 breakthrough cases in a seven-day period ending Oct. 9. During the same reporting period, the state reported 9,074 new cases. The breakthrough cases amount to about 44% of the total. The*****majority**** of new cases — 56% — are among******** unvaccinated individuals or those who have not completed a two-dose vaccination.********
{snip}
And do we wonder why this is happening?
Here's another story from todays news out of Louisiana:
https://www.ksla.com/2021/10/13/new-covid-19-variant-louisiana-detected-by-lsu-health-shreveport/
{snip}
The EVT Viral Genomics and Sequencing Lab at LSU Health Shreveport is first in the state to sequence and report that a new variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has been detected in Louisiana. The new variant, B.1.630, was sequenced last week from two samples collected in Baton Rouge.
“Thanks to our many partnerships across the state, our EVT Viral Genomics and Sequencing Lab is able to sequence a large variety of samples which increases our chances of finding new variants. Genomic sequencing and the data this science provides is important to continuing our mission of public health surveillance so we can help best protect citizens of Louisiana throughout the duration of this pandemic,” said Dr. Chris Kevil, Vice Chancellor for Research at LSU Health Shreveport.
The B.1.630 variant was first detected in the United States earlier in March of 2021. It does not have variant classification or a Greek alphabet name like the commonly known Delta variant because it accounts for such a small proportion of samples sequenced.*********It does contain the E484Q mutation, which may help the virus escape the host immune system and lead to infection.********* Currently, there have only been 79 of these variants sequenced in the U.S., so the predominance is very low.
{snip}
Vaccines work folks. The problem is the deniers keep a pool of people available for viruses to attack The more people that have waning immunity or NO immunity the more the virus can spread. Get your shots, get your booster when available
Herd immunity cannot be reached with viruses that develop new strains that evade vaccine protections because for herd immunity to work we need everyone at peak protection at almost the same time. Otherwise new mutations happen that develop characteristics that make the protections moot.
Stay safe, stay vaccinated, stay masked