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Thread: Shipping container Inflation! (700%)

  1. #11
    Buddies Son just got a delivery job. His first day on the job he got in a wreck. Then later the same day he ran the truck off the road and it took a wrecker to get the truck back on the road. He decided this wasnt for him and when he got back to the terminal he told them he couldnt do this job and he quit. The next day they called him to offer $300 bonus if he would come back. He said no. The second day they called and offered the bonus plus .75cents per hour. This continued over 5 days with better offers each day.

    Recentl a Fed Ex guy made a delivery in a Penske truck across the street from me. I was out front and talked with him a bit. He said he was a regional manager and they couldnt hire enough people to do the work.

    I cant help wondering if people are still flush from the increase of pay from covid unemployment and dont feel a pressing need to go back to work yet.
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  2. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Crow Hunter View Post
    WOW.


    Now the question is, why is a similar percentage of the population in the U.S. choosing to not be employed as there were people who couldn't get a job during the Great Recession when people were afraid of "losing their homes" and "having their children go hungry".

    Why aren't those same people now not worried? What about all those poor "I graduated and there were no jobs" people who can't pay their student loans back because they couldn't find jobs?

    I wonder what is different?
    I have seen a LOT of reasons why. In several cases, people didn't stay six feet apart (new life). Several of those, realized putting the children in daycare, meant they were working for their daycare operators. In a few cases, the spouses were able to get better paying job and they saved, on daycare.
    There are those that used the handouts to better their situations, paying down rent, moving closer to family, etc etc. That improved their situations.
    There are a lot of older people, who either retired, or haven't gone back to work yet.
    Job changes, which include working from home, starting new businesses (lawn mowing, hauling off all that stuff that people needed to get rid of etc).
    Some died, or have serious health issues (three people I know need transplants). Several have or had covid.
    Some moved back home (as colleges closed, back at parents instead of workforce).
    Etc.

  3. #13
    Without regard to whether it is good or bad, lately our safety net programs have provided enough that many people are able to decide whether they want to work or not. Also, whether working from home or not working since Covid, many have gotten out of the habit of going to work.

    A future challenge is we need a sufficient ratio of those working to support the costs of those that do not work. When workers decline and benefits to non workers grow, that is problematic.
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  4. #14
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    It's a great time to be entering the labor force. Probably a historically great time to be starting a small business. I've raised my labor rates by $25/hour this past year and I still can't get out from under the workload. I'm not sure when I last had a full 24 hours off, let alone a full weekend off. The hourly rate for today's work, since it was a weekend, was on par with what my divorce lawyer charged me. Tomorrow's will be the same. Oh wait, tomorrow is today now. Gotta hit the sack!

  5. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by UNK View Post
    Buddies Son just got a delivery job. His first day on the job he got in a wreck. Then later the same day he ran the truck off the road and it took a wrecker to get the truck back on the road. He decided this wasnt for him and when he got back to the terminal he told them he couldnt do this job and he quit. The next day they called him to offer $300 bonus if he would come back. He said no. The second day they called and offered the bonus plus .75cents per hour. This continued over 5 days with better offers each day.

    Recentl a Fed Ex guy made a delivery in a Penske truck across the street from me. I was out front and talked with him a bit. He said he was a regional manager and they couldnt hire enough people to do the work.

    I cant help wondering if people are still flush from the increase of pay from covid unemployment and dont feel a pressing need to go back to work yet.
    https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyl...labor-shortage

    FedEx rerouting more than 600K packages a day because of labor shortages
    FedEx anticipates a 'similar level of headwinds' in second quarter

  6. #16
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    https://www.freightwaves.com/news/re...off-california

    Record shattered: 73 container ships stuck waiting off California
    UPDATED: Latest anchorage stats show port congestion crisis at new peak


    The number of container ships at anchor or drifting in San Pedro Bay off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach has blown through all previous records.

    The latest peak: There were an all-time-high 73 container ships in the queue in San Pedro Bay on Sunday, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California (the tally inched back to 69 on Tuesday). Of the ships offshore Sunday, 36 were forced to drift because anchorages were full.

    Theoretically, the numbers — already surreally high — could go even higher than this. While designated anchorages are limited, the space for ships to safely drift offshore is not.

    “There’s lots of ocean for drifting — there’s no limit,” Capt. Kip Loutit, executive director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California, told American Shipper.

    “Our usual VTS [Vessel Traffic Service] area is a 25-mile radius from Point Fermin by the entrance to Los Angeles, which gives a 50-mile diameter to drift ships. We could easily expand to a 40-mile radius, because we track them within that radius for air-quality reasons. That would give us an 80-mile diameter to drift ships,” said Loutit.

    Limits on land
    The Southern California gateway is acting like the narrow tube on a funnel: Ocean volumes pour in from Asia and can only flow out at a certain velocity due to terminal limitations as well as limitations of warehouses, trucking and rail beyond the terminal. When the flow into the top of the funnel is too great, as it is now, it creates an overflow in the form of ships at anchor or adrift. This offshore ship queue is equivalent to a massive floating warehouse for containerized imports whose size is only limited by liner shipping capacity and U.S. consumer demand.

    How constrained is the flow? Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka said during a press conference on Wednesday that container dwell time in the terminal “has reached its peak since the surge began” and is now six days, worsening from 5.3 days last month. On-dock rail dwell time is 11.7 days, not far below the peak of 13.4. Street dwell time (outside the terminal) “is 8.5 days, nearing the all-time high” of 8.8 days, said Seroka. It has worsened from 8.3 days a month ago.

    Marine Exchange data reveals the constraints of the Los Angeles/Long Beach port complex. Since congestion began, the total number of container ships either at anchor or at berth has risen and fallen — it was an all-time-high 100 on Sunday, more than five times pre-COVID levels. But one stat has remained remarkably consistent: The number of container ships at Los Angeles/Long Beach berths has remained in a tight band of around 27-31 per day — that is what the land side can handle, the tube of the metaphorical funnel. Throughout 2021, all ship arrivals over that threshold have overflowed into the anchorages and drift areas.

    More ships deployed in trans-Pacific
    Meanwhile, at the wider open end at the top of the funnel — the drift area radius outside the port — a much higher number of ships is flooding into Southern California than ever before.

    Seroka noted that of the 84 ships his port handled in August, 11 were “extra loaders” — ships that are not part of a scheduled service. “And in addition to the extra loaders we’ve seen from incumbent carriers, there are no less than 10 newcomers [new services] to the trade,” he added.

    According to Alphaliner, deployed trans-Pacific capacity is up 30% year on year.

    Asked by American Shipper whether ports or terminals could proactively stem inbound flows to provide more breathing room, Seroka replied: “Slowing down these ships is something we thought about in the early days of the surge, to try to give us a little bit more time in between to get ready for the next ships. But if you start looking at slowing down these ships, it’s going to back up the vessel supply chain even further and make schedules an even deeper concern for liner companies.” In other words, no.

    Imports down year on year
    The higher the number of ships waiting offshore, the bigger the queue and the longer it takes for a vessel to get a berth. On Tuesday, the average wait time to reach a berth in Los Angeles (30-day rolling average) rose to an all-time high of nine days.

    That, in turn, delays imports. Back in August 2020, when import demand surged post-lockdowns, there were almost no ships at anchor off Southern California. This August, there was an average of 36 ships at anchor per day, according to Marine Exchange data. The port of Los Angeles handled 485,672 twenty-foot equivalent units of imports in August — down 5.9% year on year.

  7. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by GJM View Post
    Without regard to whether it is good or bad, lately our safety net programs have provided enough that many people are able to decide whether they want to work or not.
    That was true while the $300/wk federal benefit was active. An extra $1200/mo on top of regular UI was a godsend to a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise be making that sort of money. That federal benefit expired weeks ago. It appears that the gravy train has ended and the unemployment numbers-- including U6-- are basically where they were in 2015. Not great, not terrible. Not particularly noteworthy in any real way.

    I have yet to see any actual data supporting the notion that a chunk of the workforce has simply decided they'd rather be homeless once their UI benefits were exhausted. There's no explanation at all for where this shadow workforce has gone once the rent/grocery money ran out.

    Almost 700k dead + at most 1-2 million on covid-related disability? There have been other threads where BLS data is showing a significant number of people have switched industries entirely. Without seeing the actual before and after numbers I don't know that I'd buy that's enough to have impacted the labor market to this degree. But at present it seems more plausible than people just saying "screw it". Because if that was an option they'd have done it a long time ago.

    I'm open to data that supports your narrative, but I haven't seen it yet. It seems more likely that there are jobs that have an outsized effect on the downstream economy and that people would rather not do (like loading and unloading shipping containers) in lieu of some other job that either pays better or has a better working environment.
    Last edited by jh9; 09-26-2021 at 07:09 AM.

  8. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by jh9 View Post
    That was true while the $300/wk federal benefit was active. An extra $1200/mo on top of regular UI was a godsend to a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise be making that sort of money. That federal benefit expired weeks ago. It appears that the gravy train has ended and the unemployment numbers-- including U6-- are basically where they were in 2015. Not great, not terrible. Not particularly noteworthy in any real way.

    I have yet to see any actual data supporting the notion that a chunk of the workforce has simply decided they'd rather be homeless once their UI benefits were exhausted. There's no explanation at all for where this shadow workforce has gone once the rent/grocery money ran out.

    Almost 700k dead + at most 1-2 million on covid-related disability? There have been other threads where BLS data is showing a significant number of people have switched industries entirely. Without seeing the actual before and after numbers I don't know that I'd buy that's enough to have impacted the labor market to this degree. But at present it seems more plausible than people just saying "screw it". Because if that was an option they'd have done it a long time ago.

    I'm open to data that supports your narrative, but I haven't seen it yet. It seems more likely that there are jobs that have an outsized effect on the downstream economy and that people would rather not do (like loading and unloading shipping containers) in lieu of some other job that either pays better or has a better working environment.

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  9. #19
    Abducted by Aliens Borderland's Avatar
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    Costco is predicting shortages and limits.

    The Costco CFO said the company is selling out of merchandise within two weeks after it is received and that the company has been ordering “more and earlier,” to combat lengthy shipping times.

    Galanti announced Costco is imposing consumer limitations on purchases of household items such as toilet paper, paper towels, and Kirkland brand bottled water amid supply chain complications.
    Transportation of goods both overland and ocean freight is becoming an impossible situation for retailers.

    No wonder containers are becoming astronomically expensive.

    https://www.breitbart.com/pre-viral/...supply-chains/
    Last edited by Borderland; 09-26-2021 at 08:28 AM.
    In the P-F basket of deplorables.

  10. #20
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