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Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

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Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#51

Post by xiphias2 »

throwaway4594 wrote: post #38
dmitrygr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sister wrote & defended her PhD thesis disproving this intuitive but wrong connection. Plenty of states happily trade with their enemies during wars. So war does not necessarily stop trade. And thus trade is no prophylactic to war. States are most likely to cut off trade during war in very long wars - which are no longer possible between nuclear powers. http://mariya.gr/research.htm If you have counter-arguments o…

The summary of her dissertation is really interesting, thanks for sharing! But I think OP's point was "countries who trade with each other are less likely to go to war", not "countries who trade with each other never go to war". And I think OP is right. "So war does not necessarily stop trade. And thus trade is no prophylactic to war." Seatbelts do not stop people dying in car accidents. But seatbelts do reduce the c…

Yes, war doesn’t stop trading, but it makes it more expensive. My favourite example is the Kula ring that used 2 monetary instruments circling between islands in different directions as a proof that other islands are not in war with eachother:

https://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#52

Post by lifeisstillgood »

donw wrote: post #21
shoo wrote: post #10

To anchor discussion, prior to the rise of intermodal shipping containers in the '60s & '70s, cargo was shipped as breakbulk cargo. Losses from theft and damage were considerably reduced by switching from breakbulk cargo to shipping containers. Not the same as losing stuff over the side, but still a regular and somewhat predictable expense. One anecdote I remember from Levinson's book is about a scottish whisky disti…

I've taken an interest in learning more about both the history of logistics, as well as modern practices. Any more links (books or otherwise) you could share?

Home by Bill Bryson - not the first thing you might think of but tells fascinating story of Frederick Tudor who spent a fortune in 1840s taking ice from Lake Wenham in New York State and persuading the world you could refrigerate food from America across the Atlantic.

With the completion of the Erie Canal, buffalo, cattle and wheat from the Great Plains could arrive in Chicago, be butchered, kept in giant ice warehouses then shipped in box cars and boats lined with ice across the lakes, down the canal, out NY harbour and across to a Europe that was experiencing a massive population growth (1848 revolutions).

This first wave of globalisation dropped food prices globally causing (by the 1870s) massive economic collapses and shifts away from failing farmlands. British landed gentry never recovered, and the links to WWI are clear.

The US civil war would have been very different without the Erie canal if the worlds food supply went south down the Missiippi to get out to the Atlantic

All because someone liked Christoph in Frozen and want to sell ice.

Bryson is a brilliant author and this one of his best.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#53

Post by edoceo »

wongarsu wrote: post #41
dataflow wrote: post #32

Are there no environmental concerns here? I'm kind of confused why no one seems to mention anything about that.

3000 containers/year is a pretty small drop in the ocean. Most dangerous chemicals that you don't want in the ocean are loaded in a way that they are surrounded by other containers, so they are less likely to fall off (and less likely to be shot by pirates and catch fire). It seems reasonable to assume that the vast majority of the sinking containers are filled with pretty harmless stuff

I saw somewhere that for loading the outer/upper containers are lighter ones, and generally consumer grade plastic crap (toys, shoes, etc). same video shows loads of this stuff arriving on the shores of Oregon, USA - just a little waterlogged.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#55

Post by egocentric »

wongarsu wrote: post #41
dataflow wrote: post #32

Are there no environmental concerns here? I'm kind of confused why no one seems to mention anything about that.

3000 containers/year is a pretty small drop in the ocean. Most dangerous chemicals that you don't want in the ocean are loaded in a way that they are surrounded by other containers, so they are less likely to fall off (and less likely to be shot by pirates and catch fire). It seems reasonable to assume that the vast majority of the sinking containers are filled with pretty harmless stuff

> drop in the ocean

cough

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#56

Post by dzhiurgis »

ineedasername wrote: post #45
donw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken an interest in learning more about both the history of logistics, as well as modern practices. Any more links (books or otherwise) you could share?

There's been a fair bit written about how Walmart leveraged incredible logistics to achieve its retail dominance, not unlike Amazon doing the same in the online world. I've also come across interesting work on how Dell helped change consumer computing with Just in Time supply chains.

IMO Amazon makes money by selling counterfeits.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#57

Post by jlund-molfese »

lmilcin wrote: post #35

> More than 3,000 boxes dropped into the sea last year, and more than 1,000 have fallen overboard so far in 2021. Umm... we have end of April (the article is dated April 29th) or 1/3rd of the year. The last time I checked a third of 3000 is around 1000. Anyway, nowhere in the article I see any numbers to support that there is a "sudden rise in accidents". Even the graphs themselves seem to show entirely different pic…

But the graph only shows YTD losses, right? If you make the 2021 graph 3 times larger to compensate for the roughly 1/3rd of the year we've seen so far[1], it looks like more than a fluke than just 2020 alone. Both 2020 and 2021 should have more cargo loss than any year since 2013.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/k5hWs8u.jpg

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#58

Post by Sebb767 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #33

> More than 3,000 boxes dropped into the sea last year, and more than 1,000 have fallen overboard so far in 2021. A fascinating record we leave the next explorers.

If they can find them. We've lost whole planes in the ocean ; finding something as small as a shipping container will require a big stroke of luck.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#59

Post by dzhiurgis »

wongarsu wrote: post #41
dataflow wrote: post #32

Are there no environmental concerns here? I'm kind of confused why no one seems to mention anything about that.

3000 containers/year is a pretty small drop in the ocean. Most dangerous chemicals that you don't want in the ocean are loaded in a way that they are surrounded by other containers, so they are less likely to fall off (and less likely to be shot by pirates and catch fire). It seems reasonable to assume that the vast majority of the sinking containers are filled with pretty harmless stuff

> 3000 containers/year is a pretty small drop in the ocean

Exactly. Single ship holding 30k loosing 10 means just 0.03%... It's nothing.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#60

Post by smabie »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #56
ineedasername wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been a fair bit written about how Walmart leveraged incredible logistics to achieve its retail dominance, not unlike Amazon doing the same in the online world. I've also come across interesting work on how Dell helped change consumer computing with Just in Time supply chains.

IMO Amazon makes money by selling counterfeits.

You think Amazon would not be profitable if there were no counterfeits?
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