An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles • Hacker News Board

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#171

Post by ajmurmann » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

dcow wrote: post #101

ajmurmann wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Ryan Peterson's description, it was more that there was no space left to unload full containers from ships or empties from trucks to then pick up a full one from the ship. In essence container grid lock.

Yep. Both the rx and tx buffers were full and the port was dropping packets. (There were both container ships waiting to offload and trucks waiting to offload full and empty containers, respectively.) Now that buffer size has been increased, there is more bandwidth to available to actually move containers. Since the spike is temporary, the problem has gone away. If we were permanently faced with more containers then,…

Was this just caused by just a spike in demand? It seems to me the pretty would only full up with empties if there is some kind of imbalance between shipping and receiving, right?

As Ryan pointed out in his Twitter thread the bottleneck "should" be the cranes.

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#172

Post by SSLy » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

fabianfabian wrote: post #91

zelienople wrote: post #64

Or, and this is radical, we could just stop buying cheap Chinese-made crap like inflatable Halloween decorations made from petroleum products and shipped across the sea using bunker oil. Or, we could pass strong right-to-repair legislation and mandate 3-5 year warranties on electronics so that my 55-inch Samsung curved LED TV can be fixed when it dies at 2 years and one month old. Or, even more radical, we could stop…

Hey take a look around in your room and find out where half of the things are made, and then reflect on who these consumers are you are talking about.

Most of items in my room are clothes, made in EU (at least that's what the labels say).

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#173

Post by beerandt » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

mzs wrote: post #110

saas_sam wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flexport's technology had nothing to do with this, though. The CEO literally took a boat ride around the bay and looked at what was happening + talked to some people. He did the thing everyone assumes public officials do, but who clearly are not doing.

I'm pretty sure the CEO knew beforehand and crafted a narrative.

I'm with you. He impressed me until the list.

Stacking containers and finding more storage space is smart, but I think he also went pretty far outside his knowledge domain when he started talking about messing with train logistics and mobilizing the military (other than maybe using federal land/ depots for storage).

I don't know his background, but I do know trains are all about throughput, which isn't significantly improved by reducing the distance empties get hauled temporarily.

You can recruit all the traction you can find, but those tracks have a fixed limit on outbound capacity.

If anything, making a line a temporary one-way long-haul line would improve the throughput by getting rid of trains waiting on sidages to take turns going different directions. Or if dual track, run running both tracks east for some blocked amount of time.

Pull in new engines from other lines/directions, as needed.

But the bigger point is the guy appears (to me) to be talking out of his ass on at least half of his recommendations, no matter what his title and experience.

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#174

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: post #131

gota wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is inching close to the conclusion that mandatory expert panels are required for government to function. 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 tha…

Huh? Calling up your local shipping exec for a meeting is most definitely not forming "expert panels"

Yes, it is. And can also result in decisions that benefit your local shipping exec over any other considerations. Informality in cases like this is just another way to say "completely avoids oversight. "

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#175

Post by Nelkins » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

But did it actually help? It's not clear to me that suspending the rule had the intended effect.

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#176

Post by ksdale » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

whateveracct wrote: post #155

revel wrote: post #71

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…

> Referring to him diminutively as a bureaucrat is unfair. HNers have pretty much no understanding or respect for what it means to realistically be in public service. They treat the realities as unfortunate errors ripe for optimization.

I don't think this is unique to HNers talking about government, the reverse is also true, with many government officials assuming that most businesses are awash in cash that they can use to solve any problem (true of many businesses to be sure, but in the same way that government officials are scoring own goals, sometimes, not universally).

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#177

Post by ethbr0 » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

IAmGraydon wrote: post #130

kaesar14 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because incompetence is everywhere. I think most people assume that high level positions are filled by people who know what they’re doing, but my experience has shown that to be an incorrect assumption time and time again.

It's not a requirement that high level people know what they're doing: in fact, I'd go so far as to say that's impossible.

What is a requirement (when you're a high level person) is ensuring people under you know what they're doing.

It feels like we have far too little of that in our culture.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to do enough research to understand if the person who's advising you on rocket science knows what they're about. It takes a good reading list, some time, and effort.

And yet far too many manager+ just... don't.

Which allows frauds to persist on teams, and ultimately breaks things when they're asked to advise or implement things they're unqualified to do.

Every good company I've worked at expected its managers and advisors to get up to speed ASAP on (insert new thing they're working on). Every bad company had a culture that that wasn't a manager or advisor's job, and it was sufficient to repackage the words of direct reports.

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#178

Post by dmingod666 » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

justinator wrote: post #73

otterley wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the solution proves effective, will you change your mind, or will you simply remain forever outraged that you didn't like how the story was told?

Well, we can talk about dropping atomic bombs on Japan during WWII if you want. The discussion isn't going to be a very simple one.

The Japanese were ready to surrender weeks before the bombs were dropped. So it wasn't such a hard discussion really..

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#179

Post by gamblor956 » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #32

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #8

Some talk about 'building a new port' as part of the solution. I'm thinking that's a decade project and $100B or some such? PoLA tried to expand for a decade and the impact statements got bogged down and nothing happened if I remember right (my sister-in-law was doing the math on the statements)

Port of Oakland says hi. Is there a reason it does not get the traffic of L.A.? Or is a 3rd large port needed?

The Ports of LA and Long Beach (which are neighboring) are the largest cargo ports in the U.S. (#1 and #2, respectively) and collectively handle more than 30% of all cargo shipped to the U.S. Oakland is a dismal #10 on the list, and is 1/5th the size of the Port of Long Beach.

Re: An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles

#180

Post by BitLit » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #148

BitLit wrote: post #109

Apropos the importance of building new container shipping ports in places that don’t have land scarcity, traffic, and well organized NIMBYs? Let me introduce you to the port of Prince Rupert in northern British Columbia. The port of Prince Rupert has 5 (as in “can be counted on one hand”) berths and transfers 1.2M containers per year. The port of Long Beach has 80 (yes, eight-zero!!!) berths and only transfers 8.1M c…

I wonder if the containers per berth number goes down as the number of berths increases in one port because other bottlenecks appear. I suspect adding more ports is actually a way to maintain efficiency here, but there's probably logistical challenges with that (skilled workforce, supply chain support, road network & other infrastructure to handle the volume, etc). There's probably also far more cost to adding a port…

Indeed. And Prince Rupert is probably an outlier since it has almost everything going for it in terms of ship-to-shore efficiency. With a population is ~12k, road traffic rounds to zero. This also shows that a large population isn’t required for a large port.

But, more importantly Prince Rupert is well connected to the CN rail network. A rail connection is key for efficient intermodal shipping. And there aren’t many deep water harbours on the west coast with railways. Building rail or road connections to new ports wouldn’t be trivial.