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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

#401

Post by potiuper »

toast0 wrote: post #389
potiuper wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the stacks are already at 6 high https://www.tiktok.com/@stanimal18/video/7019310183545376006 . The automated storage & retrieval system cannot go higher. Peel pile would be great if the empty containers did not have to be taken to Dallas. It is questionable if this is a government failure to zone empty buffer yards out in desert as there would be even less of an incentive to return the empty containers; chan…

Those 6 high stacks are the ones at the port. From the thread, there are plenty of smaller secondary lots outside the ports where empties are being stacked, because the ports won't accept them, and there's room. The zoning based stacking limit affects those secondary yards, but not the port yards. A real question is if the secondary yards have equipment to stack higher or if they can really only go two high, because…

Each of the yards have unique constraints. Hopefully, the 2 to 4 increase is to be some sort of test such that the ability to stack 6/9 high is still within reason given it as the limit of the higher end stackers. Additionally, these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSn-dT4EMcM do not require welding to transform; are quoted with the same strength, a quarter of the original size, and 20% more expensive in early 2017.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#402

Post by bombcar »

rdtwo wrote: post #357
schainks wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is someone paying for ships to do this or are they doing their own calculations and realizing it’s cheaper for them to leave fast?

If a single extra trip is lucrative enough and at current rates it’s 5-10 regular prices that would make sense to forgo loading in the us and just hurry home

For awhile that’s beneficial to the shipper until all containers are empty in LA and none exist in China to fill.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#403

Post by bombcar »

wrycoder wrote: post #336
jerry1979 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who didn't see the 5 points, I've copied them below from here https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1451543776992845834 1) Executive order effective immediately over riding the zoning rules in Long Beach and Los Angeles to allow truck yards to store empty containers up to six high instead of the current limit of 2. Make it temporary for ~120 days. This will free up tens of thousands of chassis that right now…

Make it a port rule that container ships must be fully loaded with containers (full ones or empty ones) before leaving port, or they will be banned.

Make it fun as we’ve already got the military involved in step 2 - ships leaving without empties will be sunk.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#405

Post by taneq »

rdtwo wrote: post #351
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).

When is the ceo of a company the real expert on anything? The ceo is the celebrity that makes the big decisions but rarely ever the actual ground level expert

What do you mean by "ground level expert"? In my experience the true expertise tends to hover a couple of levels above 'ground level' and get called in for the curly questions. The actual boots-on-the-ground-100%-of-the-time people are usually at a fairly basic level of competence (or rapidly get promoted) and do the simple 'grunt work'.

I occasionally run into the higher levels these days and let me tell you, most of them are whip smart.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#406

Post by kmonsen »

rdtwo wrote: post #366
kiklion wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elsewhere someone mentioned it’s cheaper to build a new container in China than to ship and empty one over from the US. Even if you are already sending the boat. This sort of implies that it’s incredibly cheap to make the container, and/or it’s expensive to add that weight to the ship, and/or our ports are incredibly slow at loading empty containers onto ships.

Right it seems like if a ship leaves empty you might as well flatten all the containers because they won’t go back anytime soon. The solution is to make the ship pay for all that as a precondition to leaving empty

That would actually maybe be a good solution? If you leave empty next time port fee is double or whatever.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#407

Post by sbierwagen »

bsder wrote: post #309
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--norma…

I mean, storage containers are made of structural steel. It's not like they're radioactive waste. They're valuable, and there's an active secondary market for used containers. There is absolutely no situation where empty containers would get dumped at sea or whatever.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#408

Post by redis_mlc »

Camillo wrote: post #268
Natsu wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, isn't someone from the government supposed to be in charge of this? Shouldn't they be out there finding out what's happening? It seems odd that no one has tried this, yet as someone who has worked in a factory, I can easily believe that the absentee managers have no idea what the hell actually goes on among the workers. You need to spend significant actual time, to the point of working actual shifts, to get a c…

Let's not forget the media. Renting a boat and talking to people at the port to see what's going on should be right up an investigative journalist's alley. The Silicon Valley guy is doing the job of not just one power center, but two.

The MSM largely is a coverup for the Biden administration, so you're not going to see much in the way of investigative journalism until after the 2022 mid-terms. :)

Proof of this is that Pelosi made a mistake recently and publicly asked the MSM "to sell the budget bills."

Note that cnn.com is half-accurate since Sept. 1 because the Afghanistan debacle and plunging ratings jarred them into some factual reporting.

In the meantime, you can watch Fox and Sky Australia, and NTD media (all on YT.)

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#409

Post by Animats »

toast0 wrote: post #386
wcarss wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's neat, but isn't this whole thing about stacking restrictions on empty containers? My understanding of what the Flexport CEO said in their twitter thread was that the best example of the problem is the haulage company that's keeping its driver count * 3 empty containers around on-chassis (which I think means on wheels), just sitting in their parking lot, because they have nowhere to put their empties, because t…

> That's neat, but isn't this whole thing about stacking restrictions on empty containers? It's stacking restrictions for empty containers in lots that are not at the port, I believe. > on-chassis (which I think means on wheels) In container shipping, a chassis is basically a trailer that accepts a container and can be pulled by a semi-truck or one of the utility vehicles they've got at the port to move things around…

For US railroads, railroad cars may seem to be fungible, but someone owns each one and there's a settlements system running behind the scenes. The Association of American Railroads, via their Railinc subsidiary, is behind that, and all railroads that interchange traffic are members. There are standard rates.

How does that work for containers?

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#410

Post by jandrese »

lumost wrote: post #285
intricatedetail wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a system which assigns outgoing trucks an easily accessible container to deliver, rather than a specific container that has to be retrieved. This is such an obvious thing. Do they really have people so incompetent they didn't think of that? Wow

There are truck driver shortages too. It’s a crappy deal for a truck driver to take a load which they don’t know it’s risks/payout or how long of a drive they will be taking, what they’ll do at destination, or if they’ll have a return trip. Odds are you could offer truckers a special premium flat rate to clear the blockage - but it wouldn’t be sustainable.

The Twitter thread said that the crackdown on illegal immigrants hit the California trucking industry hard since so many companies were using undocumented drivers to cut down on their costs.
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