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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

#81

Post by ketzo »

ericbarrett wrote: post #63
dzhiurgis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO Amazon makes money by selling counterfeits.

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

I looked this up just to make sure — it definitely, definitely is the majority of their revenue. Net sales on Amazon.com for Q1 2021 were $75 billion. AWS and “other” combined were $19 billion. [1]

As far as profit goes, you have a stronger argument — $6 billion vs. $4 billion for AWS alone. AWS has a 30% operating margin, jesus.

[1] page 19 of https://s2.q4cdn.com/299287126/files/doc_financials/2021/q1/...

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#82

Post by throwaway_kufu »

smabie wrote: post #60
dzhiurgis wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO Amazon makes money by selling counterfeits.

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

Isn’t true they never turned a profit until AWS?

I wonder if the online marketplace by it self still doesn’t turn profit. Probably impossible to figure out with additions of services like Prime and Amazon Fresh.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#83

Post by throwaway_kufu »

cbozeman wrote: post #75
cabernal wrote: post #74

It'll be interesting when these container are found thousands of years into the future, assuming humans (or transhumans) still being around.

I would love for a shipment of dildos to be found, along with a shipment of books with at least one titled Teledildonics Programming in Python for the Professional Programmer, 3rd Edition: Updated with a new chapter on TCP/IP latency reduction .

I see it now, future oceanic archeologists uncover the container and publish an article about a long lost undersea civilization that used container as part of an religious site where they made offerings to their gods as part of a ritual. It will remain a mystery as to why the civilization left the site and disappeared but the team will be soliciting more funding to continue its research.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#84

Post by throwaway_kufu »

chrisco255 wrote: post #15
xiphias2 wrote: post #11

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 trading partner wasn’t a democracy. King George has a pretty famous quote acknowledging that if George Washington actually gave up power (as the Presidency required) it would make him the greatest man in the World.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#85

Post by AnimalMuppet »

throwaway_kufu wrote: post #83
cbozeman wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love for a shipment of dildos to be found, along with a shipment of books with at least one titled Teledildonics Programming in Python for the Professional Programmer, 3rd Edition: Updated with a new chapter on TCP/IP latency reduction .

I see it now, future oceanic archeologists uncover the container and publish an article about a long lost undersea civilization that used container as part of an religious site where they made offerings to their gods as part of a ritual. It will remain a mystery as to why the civilization left the site and disappeared but the team will be soliciting more funding to continue its research.

And then, as they find more of them, they speculate about how wide the reach of this lost civilization was...

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#86

Post by nradov »

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…

The Scottish distillers should just ship whisky in tankers a few million gallons at a time. Much more cost effective.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#87

Post by nieve »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #67
jlund-molfese wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nor is there any reason to supposed that the increased accidents are pure flukes that can't possibly happen again this year. If there's increased _systemic_ risk due to risky sailing, bad cargo management, etc. it'd be understandable for more outliers to occur. I don't think we can handwave away that somehow we're done with major accidents for the year only a third of the way in.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#88

Post by elihu »

edoceo wrote: post #61
elihu wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd guess that the median economic value of the contents of some random container that's been saturated in sea water is probably pretty low. The container itself is worth a bit if it's still usable as a container, otherwise it's what it's worth as scrap metal.

I'm having trouble imagining many things that would still be valuable. Even things in sealed containers might be crushed by the water pressure. Other than gold bars, what would still be useful? Construction-grade lumber, maybe?

I could imagine this being a rich person's hobby. And maybe the basis of a Netflix series or something, like shows about the gold miners in Alaska.

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#89

Post by Stratoscope »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #52
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?

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 warehou…

I see a book by Bill Bryson called At Home: A Short History of Private Life:

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B003F3FJGY/

Is that the one you're talking about? Thanks!

Re: Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

#90

Post by 55555 »

nradov wrote: post #86
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…

The Scottish distillers should just ship whisky in tankers a few million gallons at a time. Much more cost effective.

They should just build pipelines.
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