Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

thehustle.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 236 posts

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#161

Post by kortilla »

Spooky23 wrote: post #54
Retric wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment is about total bread consumption, not home-baked bread consumption. Home bakers and factories are both using the same basic ingredients, so why can’t supply chain’s easily swap? And the simple reality is they use different bags for transport and factories to fill the bags. Thus it’s a bag problem not a flour problem. PS: What’s so interesting about the shutdown is it exposed so much about the supply chain…

There’s no “bread” in bread, so the commercial bakeries are always going bankrupt, consolidating and squeezing every penny possible out of the business. The average American has no access to good bread at retail, with some frozen stuff at a supermarket bakery probably being the best available.

> The average American has no access to good bread at retail, with some frozen stuff at a supermarket bakery probably being the best available

Huh? It’s very common for larger supermarkets to have their own bakeries (even in small cities) in the US. I get fresh bread at the Safeway in my city...

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#162

Post by tasuki »

kungato wrote: post #110
koyote wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting! I would have thought Croatia to be small enough to not need such a system; i.e. supermarkets not further than half an hour drive away. Or is it just a matter of convenience?

Many people don't own a car because they can't afford it or are too old to drive it. Owning a (registered) car costs with gas yearly about 1 net monthly salary. Croatia is small but even so very sparsely populated. 1/4 of population is in the capital metro area

> very sparsely populated

That's very relative. With 72 ppl/km^2, I wouldn't call Croatia "sparsely populated".

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#163

Post by talkingquickly »

sandworm101 wrote: post #73
koyote wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting! I would have thought Croatia to be small enough to not need such a system; i.e. supermarkets not further than half an hour drive away. Or is it just a matter of convenience?

>> I would have thought Croatia to be small enough to not need such a system; i.e. supermarkets not further than half an hour drive away. I still think about the UK. I cannot imagine anywhere in the UK being more than an hour or two from anywhere else.

There are still a few places in Scotland which operate on such a system (I spent a bunch of time in one of them growing up and still go there at least once a year). There's a fish van and a meat + fresh produce van which comes on a (relatively) predictable schedule. Nearest supermarket is 2-3 hours drive, more due to road quality than physical distance, so people still go there semi-regularly and generally run big deep freezes.

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#164

Post by madaxe_again »

koyote wrote: post #61
Scoundreller wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rural Croatia too, except it’s a truck that comes to all of the villages 3x/week with staple items. Plays ridiculously stereotypical Croatian music through a loudspeaker to announce his arrival. And then a meat truck once a week and a fish truck more irregularly. Took requests as well. I think of it like villages having Amazon Prime starting in the late 90s.

That's interesting! I would have thought Croatia to be small enough to not need such a system; i.e. supermarkets not further than half an hour drive away. Or is it just a matter of convenience?

Small, but the transport network isn’t necessarily reliable. Mountains are a big obstacle. Croatia, like most of the balkans, is really mountainous. When it’s not mountains it’s islands. Nightmare for transport infrastructure development.

A lot of rural Europe has laughably poor mountain infrastructure - dirt roads, often badly damaged, are sometimes the only way in or out of a village, and when it rains, the guy with the 4X4 truck is your only ticket in or out.

I’ve lived in rural wales, three miles up a paved but steep and narrow lane - if you meet someone, you’re looking at ten minutes of reversing on a bad day - no passing places. I’ve been stuck in the middle of two opposing convoys and one person refusing to back up, and it’s just... well, it makes you not want to go out. Sometimes, someone gets a motorhome stuck on the bridge, and the village is cut off for a day or more. The nearest store is 30 minutes drive away, if the road is clear and the bridge is open.

I’ve lived in rural Bosnia, in a village that you can only reach by a track that looks and drives worse than most river beds. It’s only 15km or so from Sarajevo, but it takes nearly 90 minutes to get there, and there’s little inbetween.

Here in Portugal, a 15km line of sight is a 60km drive - it’s a mountainous region, and again, most of the roads are dirt, single track. The nearest village with a shop to me is 4km away by drone - 28km by road - two rivers in deep valleys between here and there, and only so many medieval bridges are passable by car. The nearest modern bridge is so far off it may as well be in Spain - oh wait, it is!

For someone like me (young, strong, hands on) getting around is a pain in the ass. I never know which journey is going to turn into grappling with straps and jacks in mud. For someone elderly, going out is a daunting prospect. What if I don’t get home? What if I get stuck? What if I break down and nobody passes for two days?

The importance of these services can’t be underestimated - I don’t think these places could continue to exist without them - their population is too low to support permanent stores.

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#165

Post by Cthulhu_ »

EE84M3i wrote: post #76
dx87 wrote: post #5

That's actually how a lot of businesses in rural parts of Alaska work, even places that don't require a boat or plane to access. My dad lives right off the highway in a small town in Alaska, and the closest thing to a grocery store is an old airplane hanger that one of the locals runs a general store out of. The owner makes weekly trips to Costco, which is ~4 hours away, and buys as much as they can fit into a big U-…

What causes a town not large enough to support a grocery store to have a U-Haul rental?

Long-term rental? I'm sure you can get a good deal on it, and since they don't own it, they can swap it out every week for another model, and if it breaks down it's not their problem. Or well it is, but it won't cost them much.

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#166

Post by Symbiote »

arethuza wrote: post #155
sandworm101 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I would have thought Croatia to be small enough to not need such a system; i.e. supermarkets not further than half an hour drive away. I still think about the UK. I cannot imagine anywhere in the UK being more than an hour or two from anywhere else.

"an hour or two from anywhere else" A few moments with Google maps and I found two places in Scotland that are ~23 hours apart by car. :-) And Scotland is only a small part of the UK.

Is there anywhere in Scotland more than two hours from any town? Only on some islands, I think (Unst is 2½ hours from Lerwick.)

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#167

Post by supernova87a »

It's an impressive and respectable story of entrepreneurial behavior and solving a town's problems.

But sometimes you wonder, some places just seem to not be suited for people to live self-sustainably in, because of location, population density, transportation networks. Maybe $12 milk is one of those signals.

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#168

Post by dntbnmpls »

cdepman wrote: post #74

Thanks for sharing - if anyone is interested in a great remote Alaska read (novel) - would recommend The Great Alone: https://kristinhannah.com/books/the-great-alone/

Also, Proenneke's documentary "Alone in the Wilderness" is great too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Proenneke

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#169

Post by Joe-Z »

madaxe_again wrote: post #164
koyote wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting! I would have thought Croatia to be small enough to not need such a system; i.e. supermarkets not further than half an hour drive away. Or is it just a matter of convenience?

Small, but the transport network isn’t necessarily reliable. Mountains are a big obstacle. Croatia, like most of the balkans, is really mountainous. When it’s not mountains it’s islands. Nightmare for transport infrastructure development. A lot of rural Europe has laughably poor mountain infrastructure - dirt roads, often badly damaged, are sometimes the only way in or out of a village, and when it rains, the guy wit…

The places you choose to live in sound pretty interesting. And diverse!

May I ask: Is this work-related that you live country-side in so many different places, or are you a restless soul? :)

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#170

Post by steerablesafe »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #38
mcny wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Add in all the waste of every 23 year old who has never baked in their life buying 20lbs of flour to go bad in their pantry and things. How quickly does processed flour go bad? I’d imagine as long as you store in a dry, air-tight box, it should be ok?

White flour lasts a long time. Whole wheat goes rancid faster. Just like white vs brown rice.

> white flour lasts a long time.

Unless you have moths or bread beetles.

Post reply on HN