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Flexport CEO on how to fix the US supply chain crisis

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Re: Flexport CEO on how to fix the US supply chain crisis

#151

Post by thephyber »

yuliyp wrote: post #65
Ajay-p wrote: post #44

What about a temporary, emergency suspension of the Jones Act for select flagged vessels? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920

What would suspending the Jones Act do? The container ships are foreign ships already.

The Jones Act prevents (or fines; I’m not clear) non-American made,owned,manned ships from going from US port to US port. Suspending the Jones Act would be relevant to foreign made,owned,manned ships except I’m not clear that there is need or desire for these cargo ships to go from clogged US port to clogged US port. The big profits are in racing back to China to get fully loaded.

Re: Flexport CEO on how to fix the US supply chain crisis

#152

Post by neilparikh »

akvadrako wrote: post #147
Ensorceled wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you quit your job to get those very lucrative UBI payments? Me neither. Canada gave out a very "generous" $500 a week, which would not pay rent on anything outside of a 1B apartment in Toronto.

Why would quitting your job enable you to get UBI?

Because in many countries (like the Canada example mentioned above), "UBI" was conditional on being unemployed.

Re: Flexport CEO on how to fix the US supply chain crisis

#153

Post by thephyber »

ceejayoz wrote: post #133
markdown wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're telling me the "most powerful man in the world" can't declare a state of emergency and temporarily suspend local government zoning laws? Hilarious if true.

Time to familiarize yourself with the Tenth Amendment.

Constitutional Law typically involves weighing multiple competing rights/interests. The Interstate Commerce clause is relevant to US ports and under many circumstances overrides the 10A.

Also, the state governor can easily override a local ordinance temporarily under a State of Emergency. And IMHO we are approaching that point.

Re: Flexport CEO on how to fix the US supply chain crisis

#154

Post by wbl »

aazaa wrote: post #74

> It seems that everyone now agrees that the bottleneck is yard space at the container terminals. The terminals are simply overflowing with containers, which means they no longer have space to take in new containers either from ships or land. It’s a true traffic jam. The author makes this claim without proof. The circumstances may be consistent with the explanation, but maybe others are as well. Also, the source of t…

Rotterdam did 14.1 million.

Re: Flexport CEO on how to fix the US supply chain crisis

#155

Post by Clubber »

drcode wrote: post #63
graton wrote: post #60

Related: The mayor of Long Beach has increased the stacking limit. https://mobile.twitter.com/RobertGarcia/status/1451679404757...

It's weird to me that thousands of people work at the docks or with the trucks, and likely understand these problems quite well, but only after a silicon valley guy rented a boat to take a look and tweeted about it did it come to attention of the larger world. Is it just that these other people don't want to "rock the boat" at their place of employment?

I mean it was a government regulation, there isn't much they could do about it. I assume the 2 stack limit was due to safety reasons, like maybe they are more prone to collapsing like dominoes when stacked too high, and a good wind blows, I don't know. It makes me think of the egg crate challenge a little bit.

It's good that the mayor made a temporary adjustment and was allowed to save face. Hopefully it will make a difference.

Re: Flexport CEO on how to fix the US supply chain crisis

#156

Post by thephyber »

GaryTang wrote: post #9

> He’s not allowed by the city of Long Beach zoning code to store empty containers more than 2 high in his truck yard. If he violates this code they’ll shut down his yard altogether. Anyone here surprised? The little things add up, multiply this code by the hundreds of others and you have a supply shortage.

It’s not a million little government regulations that is causing the majority of the supply chain kinks.

China was the only country working full speed after the Wuhan lockdown for about a year. The entire world bought masses of PPG and ventilators in addition to our normal plastic consumerism widgets. China sent tons of full containers to the rest of the world but those containers haven’t returned to China.

Everything else is a symptom of some local issue due to a region or industry being host to a disease outbreak or being host to a supply/demand mismatch with either containers or chassis.

Even that distribution lot would not need containers stacked above 2 high if the distribution channels downstream of it were not similarly overloaded.

Re: Flexport CEO on how to fix the US supply chain crisis

#157

Post by zhoujianfu »

new_realist wrote: post #58

The last year and a half of pandemic aid has been a large scale experiment in universal basic income. The results seem to be somewhat expected: a labor shortage and high inflation.

Oh top of what everybody else mentioned, even in the case of an actual UBI I would expect there to be a bit of a rough transition if it were just flipped on. But soon a new equilibrium would be found, with more people generally doing what made them happy and some goods and services changing somehow to fit the new market realities.

But it would not be the end of the economy or anything… and I think once we made it through the transition we’d actually have a much better / happier / healthier economy.

Re: Flexport CEO on how to fix the US supply chain crisis

#158

Post by seoaeu »

Clubber wrote: post #155
drcode wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird to me that thousands of people work at the docks or with the trucks, and likely understand these problems quite well, but only after a silicon valley guy rented a boat to take a look and tweeted about it did it come to attention of the larger world. Is it just that these other people don't want to "rock the boat" at their place of employment?

I mean it was a government regulation, there isn't much they could do about it. I assume the 2 stack limit was due to safety reasons, like maybe they are more prone to collapsing like dominoes when stacked too high, and a good wind blows, I don't know. It makes me think of the egg crate challenge a little bit. It's good that the mayor made a temporary adjustment and was allowed to save face. Hopefully it will make a…

Allegedly, the 2 stack limit was put in place for aesthetic reasons. On the ships they're stacked way taller than that!

Re: Flexport CEO on how to fix the US supply chain crisis

#159

Post by farrarstan »

qeternity wrote: post #23
remarkEon wrote: post #2

I'm not sure I agree with the conclusions in this thread. >It seems that everyone now agrees that the bottleneck is yard space at the container terminals. The terminals are simply overflowing with containers, which means they no longer have space to take in new containers either from ships or land. It’s a true traffic jam This seems like definitely not the real bottleneck. You have to ask yourself, "why is there no s…

No, this is not the likely root cause for reasons another commenter notes. But I want to point something out: ports and logistics infrastructure are the most unionized, protected industries that exist. The truckers may not be, but the rest of the value chain is, often resulting in huge inefficiencies. You note something like truckers waiting in lines for hours but only getting paid when they move the goods. 1) they a…

classic dumb guy here

Re: Flexport CEO on how to fix the US supply chain crisis

#160

Post by nradov »

khuey wrote: post #71
koolba wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too bad they didn’t switch to collapsible containers: https://www.shiplilly.com/blog/collapsible-shipping-containe... That would handle the trade imbalance by allowing more empties to fit on the way back. Or the USA could actually make something worth shipping. But that’s probably a lot harder than replacing a worldwide fleet of existing non-collapsible containers.

Boeing aircaft and college educations, which are probably the two largest US exports to China, don't fit in shipping containers.

The US exports a lot of agricultural commodities to China. Those used to all be shipped in bulkers but now some are loaded into containers.
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