121–130 of 159 posts
I am wondering, why it's talking about the absolute number of 3000 containers, but not mentioning if or how the shipping logistics evolved in that time. It could as well be, that shipping simply increased over years, could it not? edit: According to https://stats.unctad.org/handbook/MaritimeTransport/Indicato... container shipments increased steadily over years.
No mention of recovery. I wonder.. are the containers ever recovered, or is it prohibitively expensive, or, logistically near impossible?
I wonder if someone can make a living recovering these containers and selling their contents on eBay (considering it seems everyone treats the fallen off container as litter..).
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Yes, absolutely. It absolutely hammered home for me the extreme value potential of even (seemingly) small logistical changes. It reminds me of a quote about warfare: "Amateurs talk about strategy and tactics. Professionals talk about logistics"
Isn’t there a quote along similar lines, “battles are won by soldiers, wars are won by food/supply”?
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I wonder how many other hazards are out there. I have feeling it's small fraction compared to something like tree logs or g*d knows what else.
He has also hit a whale. He has had a lot of alarming things happen while out sailing. I learned to avoid going out with him.
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If they can find them. We've lost whole planes in the ocean ; finding something as small as a shipping container will require a big stroke of luck.
I think any future generations will likely have more advanced technologies for finding stuff. And hopefully somebody figures out how to find my glasses.
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One interesting take I’ve read on that quote is that you need to consider the source. If you’re a general for a country that routinely deploys troops to the other side of the world, in the service that specializes in landing those troops on a hostile beach with no friendly infrastructure, in a milieu when it is no longer considered acceptable to supply your troops by allowing them to pillage the countryside, you are…
It's not just remote deployments where it matters. There is no deployment scenario that is not heavily dependant on logistics. This is more true in protracted land deployments of troops across large distances, not less so. No matter the strategy, logistics must match it or success is significantly more difficult. Take Napoleon w/ Russia, where Napoleon's ambition out ran his logistics. His strategy and tactics had yi…
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IMO Amazon makes money by selling counterfeits.
That's a bit of a separate issue from their massively efficient logistics network.
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Isn’t there a quote along similar lines, “battles are won by soldiers, wars are won by food/supply”?
One of the oldest is "Armies march on their stomachs."
The running, value-producing software that lives in the data-center requires many kinds of resources, like people do. Electricity is the air of the robot armies. The network is something like having legs and eyes. Data is food because it has to be gathered, stored, and moved to the right place at the right time, and it is certainly the hardest thing for a process to get!
https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/loss-of-cargo-containers-ove...
The Ever Smart (yes, owned by Evergreen's UK subsidiary)- 44 containers lost.
https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/loss-of-cargo-containers-ove...
The CMA CGM G. Washington- 137 containers lost.
To anchor discussion, prior to the rise of intermodal shipping containers in the '60s & '70s, cargo was shipped as breakbulk cargo. Losses from theft and damage were considerably reduced by switching from breakbulk cargo to shipping containers. Not the same as losing stuff over the side, but still a regular and somewhat predictable expense. One anecdote I remember from Levinson's book is about a scottish whisky disti…
The Box is way more fascinating than it has any right to be. It touches on basically every aspect of post-1950 world economy, history, urban planning, social changes, migration, etc.