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Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

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Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#301

Post by baybal2 »

aerosmile wrote: post #287
baybal2 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't stress enough how bad it is for the world economy if the ports don't work. Not for the world economy, but for Chinese economy, as it's what US companies make the most of their money. What the current crisis shows the most is that just how close the US economy coming to a sever crisis, from well.... just missing the shipment of holiday toys from China. If China can inadvertently move US markets through just…

You're missing an important point here - if US customers cannot get their Xmas gifts on time, they won't buy them (nobody is going to order Xmas gifts if they will likely only arrive in January of later). Facebook has about 5 million advertisers, and a material percentage of them relies on the Xmas season for their financials to work out on an annual basis. Millions of US business have deposited 7+ figures each in in…

> If that doesn't happen, how many of them will get bank loans to get them out of this mess?

I think you have just affirmed what I have said.

USA is world's biggest, but an extremely fragile economy which is full of businesspeople too used to bailouts from a caring government. It's a bigger miracle it never seen major crisises from "encounter with reality" before.

> We truly are talking about a Lehman Brothers scale of a problem, and as Ryan pointed out, the only way to fix this is to unblock the ports. So if you're eventually going to have to do it, why not do it before millions of companies go out of business as opposed to only after that's happened?

I think it's essential in a capitalist market economy to let the market forces to do their job, and for Lehmans to pop from time to time. USA faces such a big crisis during every new "Lehman Brothers moment" exactly because it never lets its Lehmans fail.

Now, imagine China will embargo USA next time... Trade with USA is just a few percent of China's GDP today.

I did intern in BestBuy 10 years ago, and I know what insane portion of profit comes from around Xmass. I honestly want the US to really fail here, and fail hard, and have a Lehman moment again. It's vitally important for the US to finally have such crisis to turn the ship around, pun intended.

Or the next time, spoiled US kids will find out that there are way worse things in life than missing their new iphone 15 for christmas.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#302

Post by phkahler »

bobthepanda wrote: post #143
codezero wrote: post #84

A little off topic, but these ports don’t usually store so many empty crates, so why do we have them now? Are we not exporting at the same rate? Is that even what empty crates are used for? I’m assuming they aren’t sent back to (mostly?) China empty. I read something about the prices to ship out of the US being very high, but isn’t the price coming in also similarly proportionally high, yet we still have a backlog of…

The demand became a lot more lopsided for several reasons: * consumers were shifting spending from experiences that would've been COVID impacted (holiday travel, entertainment venues, restaurants) to online shopping * industrial supply chains in Asia were the least impacted by COVID due to the relative lack of explosion in cases there compared to the rest of the world, so we are legitimately shipping more from there…

Another poster said ships that would normally take empty containers back to China are now just unloading and leaving empty. If that's the case, it seems like it's trading short term gain for a longer term problem. Make them take the empties?

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#303

Post by JaimeThompson »

Cipater wrote: post #261
JaimeThompson wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please expand on what you mean by "culture war"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war

As of late their has been a bit of a disturbing trend to ignore everything before the past 5 to 10 years, that is why I ask such questions.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#304

Post by ThrustVectoring »

mkl wrote: post #269
aerosmile wrote: post #72

Everyone's focused on Ryan's comments about stacking, and the subsequent win there. Amazing job, Ryan, and thank you Robert Garcia for being a man to take one on the chin (for this solution not coming from your team) and for then doing the right thing. I am seriously impressed by not seeing any NIH (not invented here) behavior here. But why stop there? Ryan suggested 5 courses of actions, and made it clear that we ne…

Does he mean negative feedback loops or positive feedback loops? Getting worse every day sounds like positive feedback, whereas negative feedback would keep things steady.

People without a controls background typically mean "positive feedback" at all times, regardless of what words they use.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#305

Post by crooked-v »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #299
baybal2 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's cheaper to dump the container, and buy new one in China. Sounds absurd, but that's how it is.

Hmm. If anybody is sitting on an idea that needs used shipping containers, now might be the time to pick some up.

Shipping containers are very useful for shipping and not very useful for much else.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#306

Post by variaga »

hbworn77 wrote: post #276
IAmGraydon wrote: post #260

I love how these commenters think they know something about shipping that the CEO of Flexport doesn’t (I’m referring to the person you replied to, BTW).

Most of them are usually the top comment on a thread like this, too, because there are a large number of people who consider them authoritative (or like what they say, or dogpile, or who knows). When it’s my industry being discussed here, I can usually predict who will be in the top spot (it’s only a few), and how wrong they’ll be. It’s a real problem but it’s also the immediate amnesia thing whoever-that-was talked…

The immediate amnesia thing: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#307

Post by hedora »

mastax wrote: post #27
micro_cam wrote: post #15

Does this mean it is a cheap time to buy empty shipping containers?

No. Shipping container prices have risen threefold. The transshipment companies who have to deal with the containers piling up don't own the containers, and can't sell them to you.

They should switch to a model where the slot the empty container occupies is sold at auction.

I’d wager the difference between the current price of the slot and the value of the container is less than I’d be willing to pay for the container.

Alternatively, institute two simple rule: “No ship may leave the port with fewer containers than it entered with.” or even “no non-full ship may leave the port”.

If that leads to a shortage of movable empty containers (but the port is still full of immovable empty containers), add a second temporary rule: “any empty container stored at the port for more than N days may be ‘towed’ (by a cargo ship of the port’s choosing) to some other port.”

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#308

Post by blondin »

spenczar5 wrote: post #101
zzzeek wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would have no problem with people making things (“a factory”) next to a school. yes you would, if it were a large plastics manufacturer bringing large amounts of truck traffic and noise pollution and spewing carcinogenic PCB compounds into local atmosphere.

Zoning is not the same as regulation. We shouldn’t be spewing carcinogenic PCBs anywhere . Gigantic factories don’t want to be on small residential streets anyway because they cant fit the trucks in, so I think that argument cuts the other way - there are natural forces that deter that stuff.

the GP made a valid point for zoning: a safe environment for schools. but this comment and the other one are veering away from that main point.

of course we don't want anything carcinogenic or that dangerous anywhere where people live.

that doesn't invalidate GP's main point that schools need safe and calm environments.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#309

Post by bsder »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #260

I love how these commenters think they know something about shipping that the CEO of Flexport doesn’t (I’m referring to the person you replied to, BTW).

The Flexport CEO may know more, but the Flexport CEO also has an agenda of being profitable for the Flexport CEO.

This may, or may not, align with being solutions and advice that benefits the public at large. In fact, it is becoming increasingly clear that things are currently "optimized" strongly enough that squeezing more profit out of the system generally corresponds to finding a sucker to take advantage of--normally the public at large.

Startups and their leaders have a "move fast and break things" attitude that is no big deal when imaginary things like software is involved that becomes a big deal when non-imaginary things like people become impacted.

Stacking 6-high triples storage space, sure. But it doesn't stop container ships from running back to Asia empty.

So, that storage space will fill up quickly, and we're back where we started only now we have dangerously stacked high center-of-mass (because empty) containers (this is an active seismic zone, you know) that nobody wants to pay to get rid of until somebody dies and their insurance rates shoot up enough to make it necessary to dump the containers.

At which point, the shipping companies will magically make the shipping containers go away--probably illegally to somewhere you don't want them to go to.

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