121–130 of 316 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your last point is being reported. It's cheaper for the Chinese to export containers (with subsidized steel) than it is for shipping them back, so they're just making new ones. Conjecture, but policy wise, this could relate to steel tariffs, decrease Chinese steel imports to the US and finding the container market to allow you to keep pumping money into the industry
No way making a new container is cheaper than shipping back the old one.
This article is ridiculous. "It's so easy but nobody expected it to happen!" Most of freight is run off spreadsheets and over the phone or by email. Flexport is built around digitization and optimization. Half of the appeal of their product is that it gives customers improved visibility! It's therefore not surprising that a local city mayor didn't realize he had the power to unclog the US traffic jam. Referring to hi…
This article is ridiculous. "It's so easy but nobody expected it to happen!" Most of freight is run off spreadsheets and over the phone or by email. Flexport is built around digitization and optimization. Half of the appeal of their product is that it gives customers improved visibility! It's therefore not surprising that a local city mayor didn't realize he had the power to unclog the US traffic jam. Referring to hi…
Isn't that alone an indictment of him or his organization (which, by extension, is an indictment of him)? Why did no one on his team tell him about the container backlog? If they did, why did they not suggest that he allow containers to be stacked higher? This isn't a new problem, it's been going on since at least March if not earlier.
> There was a rule in the Port of Los Angeles saying you could only stack shipping containers two containers high. This is incorrect. There was a zoning rule which affected truck yards in Long Beach and Los Angeles. Truck yards. Not the port itself. As stated in the linked tweets actually. But if you don't believe that you can just google an image of the Port of Los Angeles from let's say 2019 and count how high the…
Anecdote: I was driving into San Pedro in 2019, and I didn't have a smart phone at the time (so no map/gps). I took the wrong exit off of the 710 and ended up on Terminal Island. That was the most visually overwhelming place I have ever been... the scale of the ships, the height of the stacked containers (more than 2), the abundance of trains... the cranes... visually, overwhelming. And then there was all the road work, construction, detours, one-ways down wrong-way streets.... I was a hell of a morning as I tried to get to my presentation....
I followed this and from my understanding the changes while enacted quickly are still only temporary (rollback in 120 days). If that's the case, I'd like "them" to think about how this situation could have been avoided all together. I can't help but thinking about how all the Asian markets were having similar log jams due to economies reopening and the Suez issue months ago. Surely it was known (or, could have been k…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the CEO has a different level of understanding of logistics compared to the major. They may be looking at the same port, but they see different things. The CEO saw bottlenecks like Neo sees the Matrix
Why doesn't the mayor of a city with one of America's most important ports call in experts like this the second trouble started? It was this easy and he never bothered to ask the experts?
But then you go back to the problem of "who determines who are the experts". Point in case, the anti-vaccine politicians dredge up the 1 out of a 1000 doctors that spouts whatever fits their narrative. Lots o people die gasping for air unnecessarily as a result...
And we have no idea how to begin to solve that problem while keeping a functional democracy, it seems
Sorry to bring in vaccines into the topic - it's just the clear parallel between these situations that I wanted to draw on.
Experts are what you want them to be
It seems weird that there is no incentive to put empty containers on an empty boat to China, esp when there is a shortage of containers in China. Maybe the port should charge higher rent for storing empty containers? There is something missing in the story.
Short-term optimisation.
This article is ridiculous. "It's so easy but nobody expected it to happen!" Most of freight is run off spreadsheets and over the phone or by email. Flexport is built around digitization and optimization. Half of the appeal of their product is that it gives customers improved visibility! It's therefore not surprising that a local city mayor didn't realize he had the power to unclog the US traffic jam. Referring to hi…
I agree that the fact it was changed so quickly should be celebrated, but it also gives me pause to think about just how many things could instantly be improved if the people with the power sat up and paid attention.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Increasing a buffer size can also make it look like the problem is solved temporarily when you really have a rate issue. It seems that filled containers are coming in at a faster rate than empty containers are going out. We've increased the buffer for empty containers at the dock but did we address the outgoing rate problem? Why wouldn't the buffer just fill again? I wonder if we've reached a point where manufacturin…
Your last point is being reported. It's cheaper for the Chinese to export containers (with subsidized steel) than it is for shipping them back, so they're just making new ones. Conjecture, but policy wise, this could relate to steel tariffs, decrease Chinese steel imports to the US and finding the container market to allow you to keep pumping money into the industry
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the CEO has a different level of understanding of logistics compared to the major. They may be looking at the same port, but they see different things. The CEO saw bottlenecks like Neo sees the Matrix
Why doesn't the mayor of a city with one of America's most important ports call in experts like this the second trouble started? It was this easy and he never bothered to ask the experts?