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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

#201

Post by Mountain_Skies »

mig39 wrote: post #183
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…

The daily and seasonal temperate variations are quite low. Seems like that would be good for smooth operations year around.

https://weatherspark.com/y/298/Average-Weather-in-Prince-Rup...

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

#202

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

more_corn wrote: post #100
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…

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.

I may be going against the grain here, but making fun of people and/or publicly shaming them, while it may temporarily make you feel better, tends to be counterproductive in the end.

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

#203

Post by mig39 »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #201
mig39 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The daily and seasonal temperate variations are quite low. Seems like that would be good for smooth operations year around. https://weatherspark.com/y/298/Average-Weather-in-Prince-Rup...

Yes! On one hand, very little snow (and if there is snow, it melts soon enough). On the other hand, no real summer, either. Just rainy season, and less rainy season :-)

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

#204

Post by s1artibartfast »

jlkuester7 wrote: post #120
s1artibartfast wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has a causal relationship between the Flexport analysis and Garcia's order been established?

I mean sure without confirmation from Garcia there is no "proof" that the Flexport tweets influenced his decision. But it seems like a reasonable conclusion given that both the problem and Garcia's power to implement the fix existed together for a long time, but he only acted (8hrs) after the Flexport tweets when viral....

The timeline seems so short, it makes me suspect. I would hope that the Mayors office would do some form of diligence before making the order.

8 hours just seems really fast for Tweet> Mayor notices > Expert review > Draft proposal > Order signed.

It seems at least as likely to me that the timing is a coincidence or ,more cynically, Flexport knew the stacking was under review.

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

#205

Post by hbosch »

gkop wrote: post #190
jlkuester7 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Correct! If we simply let the person die of cancer, we can properly investigate the tumor when they are dead.

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

#206

Post by Invictus0 »

inetknght wrote: post #115

> * 14. Everyone in the port, or at least a lot of them, knew this was happening.* > 15. None of those people managed to do anything about the rule, or even get word out about the rule. No reporters wrote up news reports. No one was calling for a fix. The supply chain problems kept getting worse and mostly everyone agreed not to talk about it much and hope it would go away. It's been my experience that nearly all of…

There was an article about this phenomenon recently--the author called it the "thermocline of truth".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27977056

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

#207

Post by SkeuomorphicBee »

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…

For us software developers, it seems like the shipping industry has the container equivalent of a memory leak (a "container leak" if you will). Then the stacking rule change is the equivalent of simply adding more memory to the system, it doesn't fix the problem, but it buys you some more time of normal system operation before the next out-of-memory crash. Hopefully they use this time they bought to work on an actual solution to the original leak.

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

#208

Post by lowbloodsugar »

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…

Indeed. Given the "balance" of trade, surely most of the empty containers need to go back on a ship so China can fill them up again? The problem is not the size of the buffer but the fact that we aren't emptying the buffer.

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

#209

Post by justinator »

otterley wrote: post #196
justinator wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a classic example of, "do the means justify the ends?" - that's what you were asking. It's a slippery slope from "make a cute story on changing container storage policy" to something more nefarious. So think: how many times have you've been manipulated like this? Are you OK with it? Where do you draw the line?

I think we all have much bigger problems to spend our time obsessing over. Besides, slippery-slope arguments are weak because predictions based on precipitating events rarely pan out to see our worst fears realized. As an extreme example, one could get wrapped around the axle fearing that a child squashing an ant in the garden could end up being the next Hitler.

> I think we all have much bigger problems to spend our time obsessing over.

You can hold more than one thought at a time.

Media manipulation is a thing, and here's an example of it - they must have thought it's not a big deal, since they're so callous of showing the man behind the curtain. If you don't find it a problem, speak for yourself. There's many, many stories of how Facebook manipulated during the US election cycle. Also not worth thinking about?

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

#210

Post by ramblenode »

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. This guy almost certainly didn't even realize he could do anything to fix the problem...

That's kind of the heart of the perennial frustration with bureaucracy: it's nobody's fault, so nothing gets done.

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