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

Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 514 posts

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#461

Post by 5560675260 »

eecc wrote: post #454
5560675260 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we don't live in a world of small governments and deregulated free markets. Without a regulation on stacking LA might not be at a point where any of those other measures are needed. A funny thing would be limiting yourself to approaches relevant in a system that doesn't exist.

Might, would… look, I don’t want to come up with a True Scotsman counter argument, but it does sound like one: blaming this mess on the single one restriction that seemed to exist. Are we going to blame driving time restrictions next?

Next I'd blame environment regulations that banned older short-haul trucks from operating in the state, but that's besides that point. The point being: there is no contradiction between wanting smaller government and less regulations and wanting a mess caused by heavy handed regulations to be fixed by heavy handed mobilisation of resources.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#462

Post by jpgvm »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #458
jpgvm wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. China has the steel. China has cheaper labour. China has more efficient logistics systems to move container from place it's constructed to a port. The answer to China being better at 99% of manufacturing isn't subsidies, it's efficiencies.

But this isn't manufacturing vs manufacturing. It's putting an empty container on a ship that is already going somewhere vs clawing tons of raw material out of the Earth, processing the raw material, manufacturing a container, transporting the container.

Sure but you asked if they are subsidizing them, the answer is no. Is it cheaper than waiting to load empty containers? It could be depending on the incentives, even if those short-term incentives are damaging to long term prospects you would be surprised how short-term most businesses think. Biggest influencing factor I can think of right now is that many importers/exporters are willing to pay exorbitant fees to get product from China to the US. This is specifically acute in areas/industries that there are no other viable source, say for instance LiFePO4 batteries. These are absolutely key to a huge number of things happening in the world right now and are outside of a few very isolated plants (CATL has one in California) made entirely in China.

There are so many insane distortions happening because of supply crunch that subsidies and trade nonsense are actually starting to become irrelevant. (though I really do hope USA sorts their shit out, their China policy is fucking up the world for zero reason).

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#463

Post by myself248 »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #441
eecc wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how free-market, small-government, deregulation, rhetoric flies out of the window when own profit maximization short-terminism falls apart and everyone starts invoking centrally coordinated state intervention. I wonder if some governmental bureau tasked with coordinating this market hasn’t been shuttered in the last couple years to some lobbyist great success…

I agree with you, but this isn't necessarily the best example. In this case, frankly part of this issue had to be resolved by relaxing strict zoning laws that weren't allowing space to be used in a way that the market demanded (offloading empty chassis). Such a measure falls under deregulation/free-market/small-government. The other measures proposed (forcing railroads, national guards etc) are of course of a differe…

Those 2-high zoning laws aren't new, are they?

Presumably the port would've architected its systems to work within all sorts of constraints, come they from physics, or business, or regulation. The fact that one of them can easily be relaxed is immaterial to their failure to account for it in the first place.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#464

Post by test6554 »

CalChris wrote: post #286
sbierwagen wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, how many empty container stackers are there in LA county?

Plenty. That isn't actually the important question or rather important problem. The storage yards are currently stacked X x Y x 2 and now they need to be re-stacked into something like X x (Y / 2) x 4 to free up space for more empties but that re-stacking has to happen from the edges. That will take a little time.

A couple strategic gaps between the stacks could make this process go much faster. The short-sighted lack of these gaps could make things slow going.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#465

Post by test6554 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #299
baybal2 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's cheaper to dump the container, and buy new one in China. Sounds absurd, but that's how it is.

Hmm. If anybody is sitting on an idea that needs used shipping containers, now might be the time to pick some up.

This would make a great "have a heart" trap for large animals.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#466

Post by [deleted] »

derekdahmer wrote: post #381
tjr225 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does any of this have to do with zoning?

The height that containers can be stacked on sites in Long Beach outside of the Port of Long Beach are governed by the city's zoning regulations. Until today the limit was 2 containers, and all of the sites were occupied so there was literally no more capacity in the entire city to store empty containers. Today the 2 container limit was temporarily suspended which essentially raises the limit to 6 containers - the ma…

[deleted]

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#467

Post by JohnHaugeland »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #453
Animats wrote: 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…

Couldn't large forklifts that have enough weight capacity to lift one full container and enough height capacity to lift an empty container on top of another simply pick up a stack of two containers from the bottom at the same time and put the two on top of a third, making a three-high stack?

the top one will fall off in the process, and most of the forklifts aren't meant for that angle of leverage

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#468

Post by dang »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #260

I love how these commenters think they know something about shipping that the CEO of Flexport doesn’t (I’m referring to the person you replied to, BTW).

"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's a particularly low-quality, low-information sort of post, which reliably leads to worse subthreads, which is why we added that guideline.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28972094.)

p.s. Animats is a great HN commenter who knows a lot about a lot of stuff (not everything, of course). I don't know how much he knows about shipping but if you know more, a much better way to contribute to HN would be to share some of what you know, so the rest of us can learn. Supercilious putdowns of other commenters just degrade the community.

Re: Long Beach has temporarily suspended container stacking limitations

#470

Post by noirbot »

antoinebalaine wrote: post #427
eecc wrote: post #425

Seems like all these tweets are about emptying ports so they - and the author’s startup - can go back to their business. The rest of the systems’ profits and sustainability seem to be secondary. Perhaps it might make sense to ponder if this super-lean truck-centric infrastructure wasn’t running too close to its breaking point? Might be a good idea for big-gov to lend a hand but also impose some top-down decisions lik…

This. This right here is the voice of common sense. With fossil fuel-supply contracting in the coming decades and over-spread cities' infrastructures being impossible to navigate without transportation, the US will have no choice but to turn to rail. It's just a matter of "when", not "if".

Isn't the problem with rail that it's nearly impossible to build new rail lines? Especially in a way that isn't destructive to the environment? I'm all for rail in general, but it feels like the same environmentalist push that wants to get away from trucks is also the force that's going to block putting fairly environmentally damaging train lines all over the American west.
Post reply on HN