Being against Black Friday? Sounds racist to me. I see pictures on TV with mobs already going into CVS and Target and taking merchandise because stealing is legal now. Let's just say those pictures already look like Black Friday, for more than one reason.
We are now up to 70 container ships backed up at the port of LA/LB.... Biden/Trump has nothing to do with this... This started September 2020 and has been building up for over a year and will continue into next summer. There is not one thing the white house can "tackle"
Does the decreased ability to truck containers out of the port in LA diminish the ability to offload from the ships on stand-by for offloading, or does it just mean that the offloaded containers are inventoried there longer? I don't know. I am just asking what the situation is there. It varies from port to port depending on what their lay-out is.
Good question, the port has space to offload containers, mostly for customs clearance, but that space has gotten completely filled and there are not enough trucks to get the containers out fast enough. So the yards are full of containers and trucks are working as fast as they can to get them out 1 at a time, or rail. I read that warehouses in the area are 100% full and product cannot be moved out of the port for local storage which is usually a good overflow helper. Of course every ship waiting is not there to unload the entire ship but often you have to move containers around with cranes to get the ones that need to get off and then they need to be positioned in the yard. They also need space to store empty containers being returned and then will get placed back on ships. I think right now there are 60-80 ships waiting to unload and that could mean hundreds of thousands of containers needing to be processed in a few weeks. I think there are 7 main container terminals in LB alone LA is another port with 9. SOme terminals can unload 3 ships at once. SO much cargo enters the U.S. through these 2 ports so I read it would take 3 weeks of ZERO ships arriving to get them all docked and cleared but new ships arrive every day. m I read there are 80 berths but that is for ALL CARGO (containers, breakbulk, liquid, etc..). Larger ships also occupy 1-3 berths at a time. I think there are 300,000 to 500,000 containers waiting on ships to unload at any given moment right now.
I see. I was just trying to figure out whether improving the trucking situation improves the ship offloading backlog. Sounds like it would because they have run out of all available space to stockpile. There are two separately named ports side-by-side there but are they under one consolidated port authority or are there two separate management structures there?
I think it is a combined management but have not looked. There are side by side so served by the same rail and highways. I think the throughput is double normal busy times so evne if we can consider there are plenty of trucks and rail cars, you can only get some many on the road and loaded at one time. Like there may be 3 crane lines loading trucks and the trucks have to line up outside the port until it is their turn. With about double the normal volume, you will never have enough equipment to get it out fast enough . What will help is a slowdown of ships coming or diversion to other ports. Given the backlog up to 60-70 ships offshore I dont see that happening anytime soon. It is like 1000 people in a room and they all are fleeing through one door at the same time. You put in a second door to help and then realize there are more people coming into the room from the other side so you never get below 1000 and even more waiting to enter. So for the ports, maybe 1000 containers are picked up in a day while 50,000 are offloaded from ships in the same day. I cannot find exact numebrs but this is basically what is happening.
This is what happens when you have folks who don't know anything about America, or the business of America, in positions that matter to America.
Alrighty. I will let this topic go, but some additional comments on the way out. I understand that Americans are worried about getting their Barbie Doll and their garlic press from China this Christmas, but this whole fiasco is wall-to-wall with implications for national security. I hope to gawd that the military "experts" are gaming some of this out to understand implications for supply chain problems should they occur under high conflict circumstances- of which there are many variations. You know, a little bit of engagement by the military with a giving and taking of expertise would be helfpful in both directions. Not saying that it needs to be anything dramatic - just that there is a shared interest here or should be. Unless you like surprises, and apparently some in the military do. You know the Brits are already flexing around, getting the military truckers to drive fuel trucks so on and so forth. Don't take my words further than I am intending them. Just sayin, sometimes joint exercises under real life circumstances is very valuable for national security purposes and also creates good will with the people who get some return on their dollar. Let me know if you hear about Camp Biden thinking about anything actually new and different. I am up for anything new and different. If you have 3000 men in prison for non-violent crimes who have served half their sentence with good behavior and you want to let em out on a national-need basis for trucker training, go for it. I am easy today. Biden bored the shiite out of me. I mean, some things won't bear fruit right off because training etc takes time. But that is only a reason to get going.