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Out of curiosity, what started this supply chain and container issue? PS: I am not based in the US
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
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).
I suspect that this measure just delays the inevitable. I'm also wondering why the limit of 2-high stacks exists (I'm guessing safety related in event of an earthquake?)
He has a lot of ideas in his other tweet thread, but I noticed that in his long list of ideas nowhere to be found was "offer better pay and working conditions for truckers."
The core issue is not too many containers. It's not enough truckers picking up the new containers, so there's no room for the old ones. And because the ships can't be unloaded, nobody can take the containers back to other ports.
It doesn't help that the full-in-union longshoremen (not the part-timer union guys) get way, way over $100k a year, some of them making $300k...and with zero requirements to meet any sort of metrics. They shouldn't be incentivized to where safety is compromised, but surely there is a balance. Right now they have zero incentive to do anything about the problem. The port sits doing nothing...and they sit too, getting paid.
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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.
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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.
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>The guy is a bad ass. If he wanted to run for President, he would win. It's interesting to note that we had a president like this, and that was Herbert Hoover. Hoover's claim to fame before being elected president was saving Belgium from starvation during WWI[1], the dude deeply understood logistics and had lots of connections so was able to negotiate with all the parties to get humanitarian relief and set up his ow…
Hoover didn’t just fumble it, he was absolutely committed to passivity. If only he had shown the same determination that he had for postwar relief.
That’s a legend that is in fact not true. He actually laid the ground for most of Roosevelt‘s „New Deal“ policies. These policies were likely ill-conceived and turned a bad recession into decade long depression.
https://www.history.com/news/great-depression-herbert-hoover...
I thought that Flexport CEO's tweet stream was really great - had a ton of insightful, first hand information and made the problem very clear. Especially import was the feedback loops showing how the system was essentially deadlocked, in the classical sense of the term.
The guy is a bad ass. If he wanted to run for President, he would win. I am really not exaggerating - I had a chance to meet him a few years back, and at that time he was the most impressive person I had talked to in person for an extended amount of time (not based on credentials or achievement, but simply based on clarity of thought and new ways of thinking). I also know that PG rates him incredibly highly. To give…
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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.