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

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

#181

Post by revel »

ncmncm wrote: post #122
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…

You appear to assume that the problem described is the problem faced. I bet we don't get a nice neat story about how changing stacking rules didn't actually solve the problem, and after a short time made it worse.

I would love to hear why you think this won't help

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

#182

Post by pessimizer »

otterley wrote: post #53
justinator wrote: post #39

OK so this is essentially a self-written news story that was manipulated to make it feel-good. That's bad . Also, now that I know I'm manipulated, I'm skeptical that the changes will have the outcome that they want. It could but it's not good that you've told me you've manipulated me. That's also bad .

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?

If the solution proves ineffective, will you ever read about that fact anywhere?

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

#183

Post by mig39 »

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…

Prince Rupert is also physically closer to Asia (saves 2-3 days of sailing time), and has very little other sea traffic. The rail line is also expanding, and has very little non-port traffic.

The port itself is protected by geography, and is one of the deepest natural harbours in the world.

It's a neat place!

Well, except for being one of the rainiest cities in Canada.

Edit: If you're interested in this kind of thing, here's a drone video I shot last year, of Prince Rupert's container port: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DyG9wOWi0c

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

#184

Post by more_corn »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #12
sleibrock wrote: post #7

In Factorio design this is simply increasing the buffer size. If the truck-loadings-per-hour don't increase then it's not going to matter how large you make the buffer. Adding a secondary site for putting containers also seems like it's going to be a new challenge for the logistics company scheduling the rides (I have a friend who deals with train cargo scheduling). Truckers who are used to showing up at the port are…

There were supposedly trucks that couldn’t be loaded because they had no place to get rid of the empty container they currently had. So truck loading rate was low, not because of the speed of the workers and cranes, but because of the availability of the trucks. So this is supposed to allow the truck loading rate to go up by making it easier for trucks to become available. I don’t know if that will happen, but this i…

I'm not sure this is a "supposedly". There were tens of thousands of trucks that couldn't unload their empties because empties could only be stacked 2 high for aesthetic reasons. Longbeach has since amended that to 4 high doubling the capacity for empties, freeing up trucks to clear unloaded containers from the port. This may be enough to shift the bottleneck.

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

#185

Post by ethbr0 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #65

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that the 'stacking rule' meant that people with more empties than they could stack 2 high on their property were "storing" empties on trailer chassis that carry one container. As I understood it, by letting them stack empties higher, it freed up trailers to be used by trucks to go get containers out of the port. When that happens the port then wants empties to…

You're correct. The article was imprecise with its terminology.

Most people who aren't familiar with trucking understand a tractor-trailer as a single vehicle, because that's what they usually see on the road.

When in reality it's exactly what the phrase describes: a tractor (or cab, or engine and steering and driver) + a trailer (or chassis + whatever it's hauling).

The entire idea of modern over-the-road trucking is built on the concept that one cab can pick up and haul any standard chassis (leaving aside hazmat and other complexities).

This is what allows for optimized freight movement, as you can limit the amount of time cabs are moving around without hauling anything, in addition to decoupling the load/unloading of a trailer (time consuming) from the driver turning around (want to minimize).

I.e. driver arrives at warehouse with container A on chassis B, parks it in a loading dock, and immediately hooks up to container T, already waiting on chassis U, and heads back out.

The bottleneck in this case was: (1) nowhere to legally put empty containers, causing (2) empty containers to stay on chassis, leading to (3) no available empty chassis to unload port cargo onto (containers must be loaded onto some sort of chassis to be removed from a port), leading to (4) a backup and full port yard, leading to (5) ports refusing to accept empties, to conserve their limited yard space, leading to GOTO 1.

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

#186

Post by revel »

p1mrx wrote: post #167
more_corn wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is quite reasonable to make fun of people who required a 2 container limit for aesthetic reasons which accidentally caused a major kink in the global supply chain. It was also inarguably effective to publicly shame them into reversing their decision.

If the limit had always been 6 instead of 2, wouldn't we have (1) smaller truck yards, and (2) the same problem with no easy solution?

You can go to any port town in the US and you will see containers stacked up like tiny towns. The equipment to move the containers is usually the bottleneck not the yard space.

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

#187

Post by lotsofpulp »

bombcar wrote: post #66
lotsofpulp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I gather that it's become harder to ship back empty containers though, and presumably just scrapping them is not a sound solution in the long run either. This is not obvious to me. The same ships are going back to fetch more goods, so why would they want to go empty? Surely the cost of manufacturing a new container is (or should be) less than the cost of putting it on an empty boat.

It’s time to load. An empty ship may be halfway back to China to get a new (overpriced) load before a similar ship is loaded with empties.

I assume a port would be designed to have a buffer of empties (or filled containers) ready to load.

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

#188

Post by CalChris »

ncmncm wrote: post #122
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…

You appear to assume that the problem described is the problem faced. I bet we don't get a nice neat story about how changing stacking rules didn't actually solve the problem, and after a short time made it worse.

I completely agree. It is just too soon to tell. Moreover, this stacking rule won't change the port; it will change things in the City of Long Beach.

I don't think it will make matters worse but I won't be surprised if it doesn't actually solve the problem. It just seems like a cheap+fast attempt at a solution which is good.

There's a lot of narrative that's going into this discussion, an heroic visionary CEO, a bumbling politician. In fact, the mayor made the change as soon as it was brought up.

But I really like Petersen's thread:

  What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks? Modern finance with its obsession with "Return on Equity."
https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1453753924960219145

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

#189

Post by more_corn »

briffle wrote: post #78
MauranKilom wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truck-loadings-per-hour will increase, but that does not help shrink the buffer if every truck picking up a container also brings back an empty one. Increasing the buffer size is a temporary relief, but clearly the underlying problem is an ever-increasing number of containers (empty or full), or we wouldn't have gotten into this situation. If we could dispose of the empty containers somewhere then this bottleneck wou…

Considering the price and availability of steel, i'm kind of suprised nobody is trying to scrap and recycle them.

Scrapping containers is a terrible idea. We need reuse those containers in 2 weeks. The supply chain is a loop. The pipeline is just stuffed up right now and we need to stash empties for a bit while we unload the ships that are backed up.

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

#190

Post by gkop »

jlkuester7 wrote: post #134
krisoft wrote: post #93

> 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…

> is the only one worth going into Sure, when your critical system goes down an RCA is hugely important and ultimately you have to apply a fix that addresses the core issue to avoid it happening again in the future. But, at the time that the system is actually down it seems like the most important first step (once you understand the problem) is to get the system running again ASAP. This can give you the runway to fix…

Counterpoint, sometimes it's better to let the system burn, or else the root cause will never be addressed. Treating the symptoms can take the pressure off solving the root cause.
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