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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

#61
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if someone can make a living recovering these containers and selling their contents on eBay (considering it seems everyone treats the fallen off container as litter..).

From the article, it seems that container losses don't generally happen one at a time, but rather you have some event where a ship loses hundreds at once. I guess if you're quick maybe you could get a ship in and scoop them up before they sink, but in order to save more than a few you'd need a big ship and most of the time you'd just be sitting around waiting for the next container loss event, and the ship would sit…

deep sea robot recovery for materials recovery/recycling? likely not profitable now but, well, time makes fools of us all.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#62
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…

> Even the graphs themselves seem to show entirely different picture

The graph for 2020 is roughly double what you'd see in every year except 2013, and 2021 has already matched most other years.

I think they're trying to make too much of a trend out of years dominated by one major accident, but the data definitely shows two worse than usual years in a row.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#63

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.

Amazon's retail business (amazon.com) isn't even the majority of its revenue anymore.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#64

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.

That's a bit of a separate issue from their massively efficient logistics network.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#65

This has been going on for decades but nobody cares because there are no consequences

The mate who hit one in a yacht while mid Pacific begs to differ.

I wonder how many other hazards are out there. I have feeling it's small fraction compared to something like tree logs or g*d knows what else.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#66

Is there a list of what exactly was lost? Does anyone actively seek out and salvage this sunken treasure? I hate to think of another Garfield Phone thing in the future with something more dangerous. https://time.com/5561165/garfield-phones-france/

My grandfather used to go and salvage (loot?) smashed up ships on the Yorkshire coast after storms as a kid in the early 20th century. They had places they’d go after bad weather, knowing that’s where wrecks ended up.

Thats a very old tradition.

Sometimes local traditon encuraged potential salvage, by setting up false lights.

edit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_(shipwreck)

but wikipedia actually says, this might be a urban legend, as there is no clear evidence this ever happened

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#67
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

There's no reason to suspect that we'll see two more 250+ crate loss accidents this year leading to results like your graph predicts.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#68

Is there a list of what exactly was lost? Does anyone actively seek out and salvage this sunken treasure? I hate to think of another Garfield Phone thing in the future with something more dangerous. https://time.com/5561165/garfield-phones-france/

This ship [0] went down offshore of Cornwall in 1641, with 60 men, 100,000 pounds of gold and 500,000 pieces-of-eight aboard. Cornwall is not known to be friendly to wrecks. And yet, nearly 400 years later, she's not been found. They say.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Royal

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#70

I see ships being overloaded a good problem to have. The more countries trade with eachother, the less reason they have to fight wars with eachother.

Really? The U.S. was founded on a war with its primary trading partner.

That’s not really relevant given the fact the the colonies were subjects of Britain not just their trading partner. It is a little different.
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