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Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

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191–200 of 514 posts

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#191

Does this mean it is a cheap time to buy empty shipping containers?

Just as a rule of thumb, a container is easily worth 10-20x what it costs to ship it from the US to China (under normal circumstances).

There's a reason they're reusable: these are quite sturdy boxes built out of high quality materials (steel frame, corrugated steel walls, thick hardwood floors), otherwise you couldn't stack them 10 high with 28 tons of goods in each of them.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#192
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real-time 3D bufferbloat visualisation! https://netduma.com/blog/beginners-guide-to-bufferbloat/ uses traffic as the metaphor, but future articles will use shipping containers.

How is bufferbloat related to the situation at hand?

Larger stacks is a larger buffer.

Just as the network can only have a relatively small amount of traffic actually "in flight" but lots can be stuck in buffers - so likewise only a relatively modest amount of containers can be on ships in the ocean.

You need a buffer or every little inconsistency reverberates and it gets out of hand, but bufferbloat shows how too much buffering makes things worse not better. If your metrics say (and some trivial metrics do) that the huge buffer is better, your actual experience contradicts that as everything feels like you're wading through molasses.

I don't have any relevant expertise to judge what the right metrics are for international shipping, but it certainly raised my eyebrows that "Let's make the buffer bigger" is seen as automatically a good idea.

Of course, a network buffer is very different from a container port's stacks, maybe this genuinely is going to make a huge difference. I think more likely it turns out to make no real difference, but can be portrayed as a genius idea that just wasn't embraced wholeheartedly enough to be effective.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you assume a state system would be better and not even worse?

Because local government represents just that locality... meaning a wealthy neighbourhood only has politicians elected and controlled by the wealthy. State govts have to appeal to a much wider demographic.

>65% of voters are home owners.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#196
post #123
post #85

Truckers are leaving containers all over Los Angeles.[1] Allowing stacking over 2 high is only useful if you have the equipment to stack over 2 high. A place that just stacks empty containers 2 high probably only has large forklifts. The special equipment for high stacking is far more expensive, and only bought if you need it.[2] A more useful proposal is a "peel pile".[3] This is a system which assigns outgoing truc…

That's neat, but isn't this whole thing about stacking restrictions on empty containers? My understanding of what the Flexport CEO said in their twitter thread was that the best example of the problem is the haulage company that's keeping its driver count * 3 empty containers around on-chassis (which I think means on wheels), just sitting in their parking lot, because they have nowhere to put their empties, because t…

If they are getting paid per delivery, it seems they could find a quarry or an unused airstrip to dump empties on for a small price.

When Tesla needs space urgently, they put up a tent. When the military needs to start a war they manage somehow to unload their tanks.

Come on, USA, we still know how to do stuff...

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#197
post #85

Truckers are leaving containers all over Los Angeles.[1] Allowing stacking over 2 high is only useful if you have the equipment to stack over 2 high. A place that just stacks empty containers 2 high probably only has large forklifts. The special equipment for high stacking is far more expensive, and only bought if you need it.[2] A more useful proposal is a "peel pile".[3] This is a system which assigns outgoing truc…

> This is a system which assigns outgoing trucks an easily accessible container to deliver, rather than a specific container that has to be retrieved.

This is such an obvious thing. Do they really have people so incompetent they didn't think of that? Wow

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#198
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NIMBY is the rallying cry at zoning board hearings, where whiny people who only care about themselves make sure those Chinese people don't put their stinky laundromats near our nice rich white neighborhood. Yes some of prefer zoning to "mixed" and "diverse" neighborhoods. What's wrong with me not willing to see a laundromat or an office building next to my house? Or what's wrong with me willing to live in quiet fam…

Nothings wrong with that. Nothing is stopping you from buying up the land around you, or agreeing with you neighbors to make a HOA that has those characteristics. The problem with zoning, is that it isn't voluntary.

It's certainly as voluntary as a HOA, which were originally called White Homeowners Associations.

Zoning is assigned by democratically elected administrations. HOAs are restrictive covenants that are required for the purchase of a house. Every single thing identified as NIMBYism could be enforced by covenants, and keeping blacks and Jews out was literally their original purpose.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#199

> This is not a comprehensive list. Please add to it. We don't need to do the best ideas. We need to do ALL the ideas. Had me up to this point. Let's not do ALL the ideas, let's have someone with authority and decision making skills make a judgment call with the best information available at the time. I assume he really means "all the best ideas", but it's worth saying that we shouldn't panic and just do anything som…

“Don’t just do something! Stand there!”

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#200
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need zoning to stop that. You can regulate against nuisances directly - for example: no industrial noise levels within 2000’ of an existing neighborhood. You also don’t even _need_ to do that because it’s uneconomical: land in a neighborhood is worth too much per square foot to be used for industrial development.

Unless it's a black neighborhood, in which case it's cheap enough to bring in big polluters? A default assumption that industrial processes are safe unless specifically regulated to say they're dangerous sounds like a shell game. The industry will chge between dangerous pollutants fast enough to be one step ahead of regulators, or pay regulators off to allow their pollutants. It's right to assume all industrial work…

i work in a light industrial area...there is a place next door that burns the crap off of commercial restaurant pans and recoats them with teflon.

their smokestack blew over last year, and now i get headaches all the time since they haven't bothered to rebuild it.

even in san francisco, purported leftie paradise - there really isn't anything i can do about it.

assume that _every_ shop is cutting corners

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